Peter Klemm (lawyer)

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Peter Klemm (born October 20, 1928 in Jena ; † December 29, 2008 in Bonn ) was a German administrative lawyer and ministerial official. As State Secretary in the Federal Ministry of Finance, he participated in the reunification .

Life

After graduating from high school in 1946, he studied law at the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena and the Philipps University in Marburg . In Marburg he was reciprocated in the Corps Rhenania Strasbourg in 1949 . In 1951 he passed the first state law examination. On December 12, 1956, he was promoted to Dr. jur. PhD . He passed the second state examination in law in 1958. He was an assessor in Frankfurt am Main and joined the Hessian financial administration in the same year. From 1963 he headed the tax office in Bad Hersfeld .

Federal Ministry of Finance

He came to the Federal Ministry of Finance in 1964 through a transfer to the budget department. In 1970 he took over the management of the department for general financial administration and federal debt. In 1974 he was promoted to general advisor for drawing up the federal budget and financial planning. From 1979 he held various positions in the budget department of the ministry. This year he headed the subdivision for financial relations for the federal states and the municipalities and, from the middle of the year, also the subdivision for general budgetary and federal financial planning.

From July 1, 1986 to 1989, he headed the central department in the ministry. He was promoted to Ministerial Director on July 18, 1986. He was appointed Secretary of State on March 1, 1989, and retired on October 31, 1993. His successor was Manfred Overhaus .

Negotiations on the German currency union

Klemm was involved both in the preparations and in the negotiations for the treaty on monetary, economic and social union and the Unification Treaty . The strategic course for shaping the monetary union took place at a closed meeting of the department heads of the Federal Ministry of Finance on January 30, 1990. At the same time, Ministerial Director Bruno Schmidt-Bleibtreu signed the clear legal line for Klemm in all details, as to how the unification of the German states should take place. Klemm described this concept as the ideal way to join . In the negotiations with the East German negotiator Günther Krause , the topics of the takeover of the West German social system by the GDR and the treatment of the savings balances of the East German population were at the beginning of the negotiations. The adoption of the West German budget system for the state budget of the GDR as well as for the municipal budget were classified as important in the order of priority.

In his memoirs, Klemm reports that the East German delegation made a major misjudgment that the GDR industry was able to continue economic relations with the former Eastern Bloc countries after the monetary union. According to Klemm, this was countered by the conversion of the GDR's foreign trade to hard currencies . Klemm also admitted the West German side's misjudgment that the heads of East German industry could have adjusted to the rules of the market economy within a short time.

According to Klemm, the text of the treaty on monetary union was formulated extremely precisely in his draft by Schmidt-Bleibtreu within an incredibly short period of time . On the East German side, the GDR Finance Minister Walter Romberg had prepared the preparations for the adoption of the West German budget system with financial experts from the Federal Finance Ministry . Klemm also commented on the Bundesbank's position on the changeover of the GDR currency by Vice President Helmut Schlesinger . He never heard from him a critical comment on our work . However, Schlesinger also pointed out the risks involved. For Klemm, the conversion rate of the GDR currency was politically correct , but economically he took a different view. The course ratio was set too high . If the exchange rate had been low, the federal budget would have been burdened less with liabilities and compensation claims from the GDR.

The high exchange ratio would have led the GDR population to believe that they had a relatively large amount of money at their disposal . That would have sparked consumer behavior that did not have a corresponding level of productivity . Klemm explicitly pointed out that during the negotiations on monetary union, experts from the Federal Ministry of Finance pointed out that in future wages and salaries in the GDR would have to be more geared to productivity from the outset .

Klemm was disappointed by the process of signing the monetary union contract in Palais Schaumburg , as the negotiators were mostly barely able to be really happy . One day after July 1, 1990, Klemm held the general assembly in the Berlin branch of the Federal Ministry of Finance , in which the Ministry of Finance of the GDR was taken over . He informed the assembled 700 employees of the GDR Ministry that 500 or more would be laid off by the end of 1990. Klemm about it: This humanly difficult process went without any major problems overall .

Fonts

  • The negotiations on the German-German currency union . In: Theo Waigel and Manfred Schell: Days that changed Germany and the world . Munich 1994, pp. 135-148

Honors

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kösener Corpslisten 1960, 100/392
  2. ↑ Dissertation: The legal status of persons resulting from artificial semen transfer .
  3. ↑ Walter Habel: Who is who? . Lübeck 1993
  4. ↑ Theo Waigel and Manfred Schell: Days that changed Germany and the world. From the fall of the wall to the Caucasus. The German monetary union . Munich 1994, p. 256
  5. ↑ Theo Waigel and Manfred Schell: Days that changed Germany and the world . Munich 1994, p. 256
  6. ^ Heinz Hoffmann: The Federal Ministries 1949–1999. Designations, official abbreviations, responsibilities, organizational structure, managers . Koblenz 2003, p. 232
  7. ↑ Theo Waigel and Manfred Schell: Days that changed Germany and the world . Munich 1994
  8. ^ The negotiations on the German-German currency union . In: Theo Waigel and Manfred Schell: Days that changed Germany and the world . Munich 1994, pp. 135-148
  9. ↑ a b Federal President's Office
personal data
SURNAME Klemm, Peter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German administrative lawyer and ministerial official, State Secretary in the Federal Ministry of Finance
DATE OF BIRTH October 20, 1928
PLACE OF BIRTH Jena
DATE OF DEATH December 29, 2008
Place of death Bonn