Peter Lorenz

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Lorenz (r.) 1976 next to Rainer Barzel (l.) And Norbert Blüm (center)

Peter Lorenz (born December 22, 1922 in Berlin , † December 6, 1987 in West Berlin ) was a German politician ( CDU ). From 1969 to 1981 he was regional chairman of the Berlin CDU and from 1982 to 1987 Parliamentary State Secretary to the Federal Chancellor and authorized representative of the Federal Government in Berlin. On February 27, 1975, three days before the election to the Berlin House of Representatives in 1975 , he was kidnapped by members of the June 2 terrorist organization .

Life

Candidate poster for the parliamentary elections in West Berlin in 1971
Memorial plaque in the house at Steifensandstrasse 8, in Berlin-Charlottenburg

After graduating from high school in 1941, Lorenz did Reich labor and military service . As a soldier, he survived the Battle of Stalingrad . After the end of the war, he first worked as a clerk at the magistrate of Berlin and then from 1947 as a freelance journalist . In 1949 Peter Lorenz was active in the combat group against inhumanity (KgU). He finally completed a law degree at the Humboldt University and the Free University of Berlin , which he completed in 1952 with the first and in 1956 with the second state examination . At the Free University of Berlin he was temporarily chairman of the student parliament. He has been admitted to the bar since graduating . From 1965 he was also a notary . From 1967 to 1977 he worked as a legal advisor at RIAS Berlin.

Peter Lorenz was married and had two children. He died of heart failure in December 1987 at the age of 64. His final resting place is in the Evangelical Cemetery Nikolassee (Dept. PI-1/2). The grave has been dedicated as a Berlin honorary grave since 1997 .

politics

Political party

From 1945 he was a member of the CDU. Here he was initially involved in the Junge Union , whose first state chairman in Berlin he was from 1946 to 1949. In 1953 he took over the office again for a short time. From 1950 to 1953 he was also deputy federal chairman of the Junge Union.

At the end of the 1940s, he campaigned for the establishment of the Free University of Berlin after the communist rulers (the SED and SMAD ) in the east of the city had succeeded in taking the Humboldt University under their influence and protesting against it from students and teachers to turn it off using various methods.

In 1961 he was elected second chairman of the Berlin CDU and was finally regional chairman of the CDU in Berlin from 1969 to 1981. From 1971 to 1981 he was also a member of the CDU federal executive committee .

In 1971 and 1975 he challenged Governing Mayor Klaus Schütz ( SPD ) as the top candidate , but could not prevail against him despite clear gains in votes.

MP

Lorenz was a member of the Berlin House of Representatives from 1954 to 1980 . Here he was also a member of the board of the CDU parliamentary group , then vice-president from 1967 to 1975 and president of the Berlin House of Representatives from 1975 to 1980. He was followed by Heinrich Lummer after.

From 1976 to 1977 and from 1980 until his death he was a member of the German Bundestag as a Berlin MP . From 1980 to 1982 he was chairman of the working group on German relations and Berlin issues of the CDU / CSU parliamentary group .

Parliamentary State Secretary

After Helmut Kohl was elected Federal Chancellor on October 1, 1982, Lorenz was appointed Parliamentary State Secretary to the Federal Chancellor and authorized representative of the Federal Government in Berlin. After the federal election in 1987 , he left office on March 12, 1987.

See also:
Cabinet Kohl I - Cabinet Kohl II

kidnapping

Memorial plaque at Quermatenweg 128, in Berlin-Zehlendorf

For the 1975 parliamentary elections, Peter Lorenz was the top candidate of the Berlin CDU for the office of governing mayor for the second time.

On February 27, 1975, three days before the election, terrorists of the June 2 Movement forced Lorenz's chauffeur Werner Sowa, who was supposed to take the politician to the office in a Mercedes company car, at the corner of Quermatenweg and Ithweg in Zehlendorf ( 52 ° 27 ′ 10.1 ″  N , 13 ° 14 ′ 39.5 ″  E ) with a truck blocking the road to stop. 1,500 meters from his house, they rammed the politician's car with a Fiat 124 Special . Sowa was knocked down, Lorenz kidnapped and held in a basement room at Schenkendorfstrasse 7 in Berlin-Kreuzberg, which the kidnappers called the “people's prison”.

The next day the German press agency received a Polaroid photo showing Lorenz with a poster: "Prisoner of the June 2nd Movement". The kidnappers demanded the release and departure of six imprisoned terrorists from the Red Army Faction and the June 2 Movement to a country of their choice: Horst Mahler , Verena Becker , Gabriele Kröcher-Tiedemann , Ingrid Siepmann , Rolf Heissler and Rolf Pohle . The kidnappers legitimized the selection of their victim by saying that Lorenz was a “representative of the reactionaries and the bigwigs, responsible for piecework and spying on the workplace”.

For Helmut Kohl (CDU) , Franz Josef Strauss (CSU) and the Union as well as the ruling mayor of Berlin Klaus Schütz (SPD) , the life of Lorenz was in the foreground. Federal Chancellor Helmut Schmidt (SPD) , on the other hand, was “voted against”. Finally, the federal government ( Schmidt I cabinet ) decided to respond to the kidnappers' demands. With the exception of Mahler, who refused an exchange, the prisoners were flown to Aden in what was then South Yemen on March 3, 1975 in a Boeing 707 . When the pastor and former governing mayor of Berlin Heinrich Albertz , who had accompanied the prisoners on this flight, announced the fixed slogan ("Such a day, as beautiful as today") on television, Peter Lorenz was released on March 4th. In the March 2nd election , the CDU became the strongest party for the first time with 43.9% of the vote. However, the previous incumbent Klaus Schütz , who led a social-liberal coalition , remained mayor . The parliamentary and political reappraisal took place within the framework of the Bundestag debate on March 13, 1975 .

Ralf Reinders , Ronald Fritzsch , Gerald Klöpper , Andreas Vogel and Till Meyer were convicted as perpetrators .

The abduction of Peter Lorenz was the only successful attempt by the June 2 Movement to exchange prisoners for a hostage. The fact that some of the released prisoners were later active again in terrorism and murdered people encouraged the federal governments not to give in to the demands of kidnappers again unconditionally.

tomb

For Peter Lorenz himself, the kidnapping became a traumatizing experience. According to Helmut Kohl , Lorenz lost much of his vigor as a result.

On October 28, 2019 , a memorial stele was unveiled at his kidnapping site, Berlin-Zehlendorf , Quermatenweg corner Ithweg.

literature

Web links

Commons : Peter Lorenz  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Died: Peter Lorenz . In: Der Spiegel . No. 51 , 1987 ( online ).
  2. ^ Hans-Jürgen Mende : Lexicon of Berlin burial places . Pharus-Plan, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-86514-206-1 , p. 627. Honorary graves of the State of Berlin (as of November 2018) . (PDF, 413 kB) Senate Department for the Environment, Transport and Climate Protection, p. 54; accessed on March 10, 2019.
  3. ^ The history of the RAF ( Memento from December 3, 2016 in the Internet Archive ), Part 3/6, ZDFinfo from August 2, 2015,
  4. ↑ morgenpost.de
  5. ↑ tagesspiegel.de
  6. ↑ taz.de
  7. ^ Butz Peters: Hundert Tage: Die RAF-Chronik 1977 . Knaur, 2017, ISBN 978-3-426-78811-0 , pp. 145-146 : "27. February 1975, just before 9 am: Lorenz's driver Werner Sowa, a judoka, knocked the perpetrators unconscious with a stick "
  8. ^ Maren Richter: Life in a State of Emergency : Terrorism and Personal Protection in the Federal Republic of Germany (1970–1993). Campus, Frankfurt am Main / New York 2014, p. 50.
  9. ↑ Henning Köhler: Helmut Kohl: A life for politics. The biography . 1st edition. Bastei Lübbe (Quadriga), 2014, ISBN 978-3-86995-076-1 , p. 285 : “For Kohl and the Union, saving the life of Peter Lorenz was in the foreground. The ruling mayor of Berlin, Klaus Schütz, took the same point of view, while Chancellor Schmidt was "voted against" and clearly held back. "
  10. ↑ Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung - static content detail. April 21, 2019, accessed April 21, 2019 .
  11. ↑ How the kidnapping of Peter Lorenz changed the republic - Berlin - Current News - Berliner Morgenpost. April 21, 2019, accessed April 21, 2019 .
  12. ↑ Lorenz kidnapping: Just the dress rehearsal? In: Der Spiegel . No. 10 , 1975 ( online ).
  13. ↑ Jacques Schuster : Heinrich Albertz - The man who lived several lives. A biography. Fest, Berlin 1997, pp. 287-299.
  14. ↑ Gerd Nowakowski: The trial of strength of June 2nd . In: Der Tagesspiegel , February 25, 2015
  15. ↑ Wilfried Rott : The island. A History of West Berlin 1948–1990. CH Beck, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-406-59133-4 , p. 312.
  16. ↑ Wilfried Rott : The island. A History of West Berlin 1948–1990. CH Beck, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-406-59133-4 , p. 313.
  17. ↑ https://www.berliner-woche.de/zehlendorf/c-folk/gedenkstele-fuer-peter-lorenz-aufständig_a239566
personal data
SURNAME Lorenz, Peter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (CDU), MdA
DATE OF BIRTH December 22, 1922
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH December 6, 1987
Place of death West Berlin