Roland Appel (politician)

Roland Appel (born January 5, 1954 in Cologne ) is a German politician ( Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen ), management consultant and publicist.

biography

Roland Appel was politicized by the "Roter Punkt" campaigns against fare increases in 1971, and during school time, together with the later RAF member Eva Haule, founded an SV collective to politicize the student council of the Mörike grammar school and the district association of young democrats in Esslingen am Neckar . With the support of the then JuSo chairman Volker Hauff, Appel became president of the Esslingen student parliament in 1972, which arose from the “anti-authoritarian student movement”.

After graduating from high school in 1974 and then doing community service at the DRK Stuttgart, Appel initially studied law and philosophy in Tübingen from 1975 to 1978 . He was a member of the state executive committee of the German Young Democrats and was state chairman in 1976. As a member of the FDP executive board defended Appel in German Autumn the imprint of the so-called " Buback -Nachrufes" of Göttingen Mescalero in a publication of the Berlin Young Democrats against censorship similar measures of the mother party. Together with the largely left-liberal state board of the FDP Baden-Württemberg, Appel organized civil rights resistance within the FDP against professional bans, the contact blocking law and other anti-terror laws of the German Autumn and called for the resignation of Federal Interior Minister Werner Maihofer, who was involved in the bugging affair surrounding Klaus Traube .

Appel continued his law studies from 1978 to 1982 in Bonn . Parallel to his studies, he worked as an employee of left-wing liberal MPs ( Helmut Schäfer , Wolf-Dieter Zumpfort , Wolfram Bergerowski ) of the FDP in the Bundestag until the turn of 1983. From 1983 to 1990, Appel studied political science in Bonn.

From January 1984 to May 1990 he was also a research assistant in the parliamentary group The Greens . As coordinator, he headed the parliamentary group's legal and society working group and, in 1986/87, organized the cooperation of the Green parliamentary group with the extra-parliamentary movement against the 1987 census. Because of the call for the registration number to be separated from the census sheet, he was appointed jointly with the then federal manager the Greens, Eberhard Walde , initially sentenced by the Bonn District Court to 50 daily rates for “calling for property damage”; in the second instance in 1988 the judgment was overturned against payment of a fine .

From 1990 to 2000 Appel was a member of the parliamentary group of the Greens in the eleventh and twelfth state parliaments of North Rhine-Westphalia . In 1990 he became the 12th of 12 members of the state parliament and became a member of the committees for internal administration, law, the prison commission and the parliamentary control commission for the protection of the constitution. After the arson attack in Solingen on a house belonging to Turkish immigrants, Appel researched evidence and reports about the activities of a martial arts trainer in the right-wing extremist scene, from which the perpetrators also came. Due to his initiatives, State Interior Minister Herbert Schnoor had to go public in 1994 and even expose the undercover agent of the NRW constitutional protection, who had been active in the perpetrator's environment.

In 1995 Appel moved into the state parliament in sixth place on the state list of his party and was a member of the main committee, the interior committee, the parliamentary control commission and became deputy chairman of the legal committee. In 1995 and 2000 he was a member of the green negotiating delegation for a coalition with the SPD, responsible for domestic and legal policy.

After the formation of the red-green coalition with Johannes Rau in 1995, Appel was elected parliamentary group leader with equal rights alongside Gisela Nacken with 13:11 votes in a fight against Marianne Hürten . Within the Greens, he belonged to the Left Forum , which split in the course of the 12th electoral term in view of the tensions in the coalition with the SPD. Together with Bärbel Höhn, Appel founded the so-called “government left” in 1995, which, together with the “real politicians”, campaigned for a continuation of the coalition with the SPD. Because he - according to his information for family reasons - could not fulfill his donation obligations to the party, Appel was no longer set up by the list party conference in 1999. He accepted the decision and was confirmed in his office as parliamentary group leader by a large majority until the end of the electoral term. For the 2009 Bundestag election , Appel tried to get a place on the list, but failed with his candidacy.

Roland Appel has been working as an independent management consultant since July 2000. Since 2000 he has been appointed to the G-10 commission five times by the state parliament of North Rhine-Westphalia at the suggestion of the Greens - currently until 2022 - and is thus the "longest-serving" controller of a German secret service. Based on the Emergency Acts of 1968, the G-10 Commission decides instead of a court on measures of the protection of the constitution to restrict postal and telecommunications as well as banking secrecy.

Roland Appel has been chairman of the "Gütesiegelboard" of the Initiative D21 eV since 2005. The Initiative D21e.V. is the largest social initiative of the IT industry and the state in Germany with over 200 member companies and state institutions based in Berlin. He is also a "MINT" ambassador for the employer-related initiative MINT-Zukunftmachen eV, which is committed to strengthening scientific and informational education in schools.

As a reaction to the increasing data scandals in the state and private sector, Roland Appel and his consulting company developed the "data protection driving license" in a project funded by the BMBF and the EU together with the service company for information technology mbH and the corporate data protection officer of Daimler AG Certificate for employees, which is awarded after an appropriate examination.

Appel has published regularly as an author and guest commentator on independent blogs since 2015.

family

Roland Appel is the son of Karl-Heinz Appel, former test pilot of the Dornier-Werke until 1945, since 1952 a manager of Daimler-Benz AG, d. 1989, and Irma Appel, b. Radon, died 2007. Roland Appel is the father of two children and has been divorced since 2014.

Memberships

From 1972 to 1982 Appel was a member of the FDP / DVP in Baden-Württemberg, held various positions as a member of the Esslingen district executive, a delegate to federal party conferences and a member of the FDP state executive. From 1975 to 1977 Appel was first deputy and then state chairman of the Young Democrats in Baden-Württemberg. 1979 Appel was appointed deputy. Elected federal chairman and federal treasurer of the German Young Democrats and was a member of the federal executive board until the youth association separated from the FDP in 1983. As federal chairman of the Liberal University Association from 1981 to 1982 he was a member of the federal board of the FDP. From 1982 to 1984 Appel was a (founding) member of the Liberal Democrats split off from the FDP . Since 1985 he has been a member of the party Die Grünen, now Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen in the Bonn district association. He is also a member of the civil rights organization Humanist Union (HU) and a member of the DJV (Deutscher Journalisten Verband) NRW. From 1989 to 1991 he was a member of the federal board of the HU. Since December 2018 Appel has been chairman of the Radikaldemokratische Stiftung iG - Radikaldemokratisches Bildungswerk eV, the network of former young democrats / young leftists.

Publications

• Beware of the census! Recorded, networked & counted. (Ed.) With Dieter Hummel, Cologne 1987 ISBN 3-923243-31-6
• Die Neue Sicherheit (ed.) With Dieter Hummel and Wolfgang Hippe, Cologne 1988, ISBN 3-923243-34-0
• The asylum lie. A manual against xenophobia and racism (ed.) With Claudia Roth, Cologne 1993, ISBN 3-926949-07-4
• Realizing basic rights, fighting for freedom - 100 years of young democrats - A reader on left-liberal and radical democratic politics from Weimar to the 21st century 1919–2019 (ed.) With Michael Kleff, Academia Baden-Baden 966 S. 2019, ISBN 978-3 -89665-800-5

Literature and Sources

• Appel's documents from his time as a member of the state parliament are kept in the state archive of North Rhine-Westphalia, Rhineland department, and form the RW 0703 file there.

Web links

Roland Appel (politician) at the North Rhine-Westphalia state parliament

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Esslinger Zeitung of April 22, 1972
2. ↑ Special information from the Young Democrats Regional Association Berlin on the kidnapping of the employer president Hanns-Martin Schleyer and the murder of his companions with numerous articles on the dispute with the RAF
3. ^ Minutes of the Federal Delegates' Conference of the Young Democrats 1978 in Braunschweig
4. ^ Handbook of the Landtag of North Rhine-Westphalia, 12th electoral period, chap. 7 p. 1
5. ↑ Focus 24 (June 13, 1994)
6. ↑ Who's who 1999 p. 25
7. ↑ www.RoaConsult.com
8. ↑ www.internet-guetesiegel.de
9. ↑ [1]
10. ↑ [2]
11. ↑ About us . radikaldemokratische-stiftung.org. Retrieved March 3, 2020.