Theodor Blank

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Theodor Blank (Bundeswehr photo)

Theodor Anton Blank (* 19th September 1905 in Elz , † 14. May 1972 in Bonn ) was a German politician of the CDU , which was named after him Blank Office of, a forerunner of the Federal Ministry of Defense (from 1961 to the defense) built and directed. From 1955 to 1956 he was the first Federal Minister for Defense of the Federal Republic of Germany and from 1957 to 1965 Federal Minister for Labor and Social Affairs .

Life and work

Theodor Blank with Adolf Heusinger (left) and Hans Speidel in 1955
Theodor Blank (left) in Paris in 1957

Theodor Blank was born on September 19, 1905, the third of ten children in Elz in the Westerwald. His father was a carpenter. His mother was Margarete Blank, née Eufinger. Theodor Blank was baptized Catholic and raised in this faith. His parents moved to Dahlhausen near Bochum in 1913 . Influenced by his father, Blank was close to the goals of the Center Party during these years . After graduating from elementary school in 1919, he completed an apprenticeship as a model carpenter and a course for metal workers by 1923 . During his apprenticeship he joined the Christian trade unions . After completing his professional career, he worked as a worker in the stone factory Dr. C. Otto & Comp. employed in Dahlhausen / Ruhr.

From 1929, Blank worked full-time at the Central Association of Christian Factory and Transport Workers and was the trade union secretary responsible for the northern and north-western Ruhr area. His sphere of activity in Dortmund consisted of becoming effective here as an agitation and administrative head. He gained his first experience in trade union work, especially from the point of view of the workers. During this time he also acquired the secondary school certificate at an evening school.

When the National Socialists came to power in early 1933, the free trade unions were banned. This also applied to the Christian trade unions . Theodor Blank thus found himself unemployed, which continued in 1934 and 1935. He used this time to gain professional qualifications. He found support in the Bischöflichen Konvikt in Braunsberg, where he prepared for his Abitur exam , which he then passed as an external student at the Carl-Humann-Gymnasium in Essen-Steele in 1936 . He then started studying mathematics and physics at the University of Münster , which he had to abandon for financial reasons.

In order to make a living, Blank therefore worked for about a year from 1937 onwards, outside the Ruhr area, in the Junkers aircraft and engine works in Dessau . In 1938 he returned to Dortmund and started working as a designer for pit fans for a mine construction company. In the spring of 1939, in addition to this occupation, he began studying engineering at the Technical University of Hanover . In 1939 he married Paula Baumgart from Dortmund.

He was drafted into the Wehrmacht as early as mid-August 1939 and was employed here as a technical inspector of the intelligence regiment of a tank division. With that he had to quit his studies again. In the Wehrmacht he reached the rank of first lieutenant in the reserve . Shortly before the end of the war, Blank was captured by US Army soldiers north of Dachau in 1945 . He was released from captivity at the beginning of July and was able to return to Dortmund.

Immediately after the end of the war, Theodor Blank resumed his work in the trade union movement. Here he was one of the active organizers and later co-founders of the German Federation of Trade Unions . At the side of Hans Böckler (1875–1951), he campaigned for the formation of ideologically and party-politically independent unified trade unions based on his experience during the time of the Nazi regime. From 1945 to 1950 he was a member of the executive board of IG Bergbau ; from 1948 he was its third chairman.

On the recommendation of Konrad Adenauer , Theodor Blank was delegated to the Frankfurt Economic Council of the United Economic Area as spokesman for the employees. In Dortmund he co-founded the Association of Christian Democratic Workers . In these committees he strongly advocated the new economic policy represented by Ludwig Erhard (1897–1977) to create the basis for the social market economy.

His brother Joseph Blank was a member of the state parliament in North Rhine-Westphalia from 1954 to 1958 . His son is Theodor Blank junior. His nephew Joseph-Theodor Blank was a member of the German Bundestag from 1983 to 2002.

Political party

Immediately after Theodor Blank's return from the turmoil of the war, it was important for him to be politically active himself. A dominant goal for him was to support the democratic reconstruction of Germany. He saw good opportunities for this through his participation in the development of a non-denominational Christian people's party. That is why Blank was one of the founders of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) in Westphalia. Just a year later he was chairman of the CDU parliamentary group in the Dortmund city council and worked here primarily as a spokesman for the younger generation. When the state of North Rhine-Westphalia was founded in 1946, he was a member of the CDU parliamentary group in the state parliament, whose chairman was Konrad Adenauer (1876-1967). He was impressed by Theodor Blanks' energy and encouraged him to continue to be active in politics. From 1958 to 1969 he was a member of the federal executive board of the CDU, and from 1958 to 1966 he was deputy federal chairman of the CDU and thus a member of the CDU presidium.

MP

As a young activist on the political stage, Theodor Blank was appointed to the Dortmund city council on December 14, 1945. In October 1946 he became a member of the state parliament of North Rhine-Westphalia, which was appointed by the British occupation forces . From 1947 to 1949 he was also a member of the Economic Council of the Bizone . There he was a staunch advocate of the social market economy based on the model of the Ahlen program of the North Rhine-Westphalian CDU, which was accepted on February 3, 1947 at a conference in the St. Michael high school in Ahlen. “Overcome capitalism and Marxism” was the dominant goal from the experiences of the last two decades in Germany.

Theodor Blank had been a member of the German Bundestag since the first federal election in 1949 . As a direct candidate for the Borken - Bocholt - Ahaus constituency , he entered the Bundestag as a member. This started a long and successful tradition that lasted for many years. Theodor Blank has always entered the Bundestag as a directly elected member of the Borken - Bocholt - Ahaus and Ahaus-Bocholt constituencies. After leaving the federal government, he served as deputy chairman of the CDU / CSU parliamentary group from 1965 to 1969 , after having been an assessor on the parliamentary group's executive committee as early as 1956/57. In 1957, as part of his mandate in the Bundestag, he worked on the Union parliamentary group's draft law for the privatization of the Volkswagen factory .

In 1952, Blank belonged to a group of 34 members of the CDU / CSU parliamentary group who introduced a bill to introduce relative majority voting in the Bundestag and thus also endangered the stability of the coalition, as this posed a threat to their parliamentary parties for the other parties in the government Meant existence.

Theodor Blank resigned his seat on April 21, 1972, already seriously ill, for health reasons.

Public offices

The first federal government

On May 23, 1949, the Basic Law of the Federal Republic of Germany came into force. The establishment of the federal organs began on August 14, 1949 with the first elections to the Bundestag. The CDU / CSU emerged as the election winners. Konrad Adenauer asked Theodor Blank to take over the office of Federal Minister of Labor in the first government of the Federal Republic . Theodor Blank renounced this position in favor of Anton Storch (1892–1975), who also came from the ranks of the Christian trade unions and was also in discussion for this position. On September 20, 1949, Storch was confirmed as the first Federal Minister of Labor.

Office blank

In the middle of 1950 the topic of the security of the still young state moved more into the focus of the political deliberations of Federal Chancellor Adenauer. Therefore, on May 24, 1950, he appointed the former armored troop general Gerhard Graf von Schwerin (1899–1980) as his security advisor. On July 13, 1950, Theodor Blank was one of the select group of Union parliamentarians who were confronted with the issue of rearmament in the Federal Republic at the invitation of the American High Commissioner John Jay McCloy (1895-1989). As Franz Josef Strauss (1915–1988) later recalled, the answer was “yes”, but only with full equality. However, since there were already disagreements with Graf von Schwerin in the first few months of work, Theodor Blank was introduced to the cabinet as the new security officer on October 17, 1950 and Graf von Schwerin was released from this position. An important principle of this security policy activity, which Konrad Adenauer vehemently defended from the experiences of German history, was the primacy of politics over everything military. On October 26, 1950, Theodor Blank was appointed the Federal Chancellor's commissioner for matters relating to the increase in the number of Allied troops . In addition to his political stance and the experience he had gained in trade union and party work, especially since 1945, he was selected for this office because, as a “simple” reserve officer, he could not be associated with German militarism in public and was a good guarantee offered that at this sensitive point of political action, non-military considerations gained the upper hand. As a special representative of the Chancellor, Blank set up the Blank Office (also called Blank Office) from the end of 1950 , which dealt exclusively with a planned future rearmament of Germany, which was very controversial among the public. According to polls at the time, 70% of the population were against rearmament. His office was initially in a makeshift building at the Koenig Museum in Bonn and from December 1950 in the Ermekeil barracks .

Theodor Blank's first fundamental task in this newly created office was to safeguard German interests in the implementation of the Pleven Plan of October 24, 1950, as a proposal for the formation of a European army, to which German battalions should also belong. This was a proposal by the then French Prime Minister René Pleven (1901-1993) to create an "integrated Western European armed force under a single command", which pursued the goal of preventing Germany from becoming a member of NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization), which was founded in 1949 "Or North Atlantic Pact Organization) and should not have its own large military units. The negotiations for which Theodor Blank received the power of attorney from the federal government and was entrusted by Konrad Adenauer with the management of the negotiating delegation at the “Interim Committee for the Organization of the European Defense Community ”. The negotiations began on February 15, 1951 in Paris and lasted until June. During the first few days of negotiations it became clear that French and German interests could only be reconciled within the framework of the European Defense Community . Although Theodor Blank had no previous diplomatic experience and was also not familiar with the general conditions and behavior on this international stage in advance, he was able to negotiate good conditions for the formation of a German military contingent of armed forces, with only little discrimination against Germany. Germany took on the obligation to set up twelve homogeneous tank divisions. As military experts at his side, the former generals of the Wehrmacht and later generals of the Bundeswehr Hans Speidel (1897-1984), Adolf Heusinger (1897-1982) and Johann Adolf Graf von Kielmansegg (1906-2006) participated in the negotiations.

In addition, the Blank Office carried out investigations into the uniformity of the future armed forces, submitted proposals for camouflage patterns, and the design of combat and dress suits. The office was also responsible for the introduction of military vehicles such as the DKW Munga .

At that time, two administrative employees and a small military planning group were working under the direction of Blank in the newly created office. It turned out to be extremely difficult that he did not hold an externally representative position. In the implementation of certain sub-goals of his work area, he repeatedly came under domestic political pressure. His military specialist partners, former generals, high-ranking officers who had received and implemented orders in clear command structures during the war, were used to clear power structures. The result of the Bundestag election of September 6, 1953, Konrad Adenauer saw his security policy concept confirmed. When the new government cabinet was then set up, Theodor Blank demanded that he take up the post of defense minister in order to obtain clearer legitimation for his work. However, Federal Chancellor Konrad Adenauer refused on the grounds that he did not want to give France any more counter-arguments to build up German armed forces. In the meantime, the Blank office had grown to 831 employees.

On August 30, 1954, the French National Assembly refused to ratify the EDC Treaty , which had already been signed by all participating governments on May 27, 1952 . Konrad Adenauer was in ruins for his security policy. But this new situation was also a disaster for Theodor Blank. His efforts and partial results achieved to build up his own German armed forces had been swept away overnight. The extremely difficult situation in which he had been operating since 1950 and the pressure on him had also worn him out physically. From a political point of view, he was at zero.

In the course of the criticism of the rearmament, Blank was also exposed to personal attacks. A spectacular incident occurred in Augsburg on November 24, 1954 . At an election event of the CSU in the restaurant of the Rosenaustadion he could not say a word for 25 minutes after greeting "Ladies and Gentlemen". Over 700 rioters in the completely overcrowded bar shouted the speaker down. When the police escorted him out, Blank was "injured in the right cheek by a piece of glass that came from a wine glass thrown out of the crowd, and was hit in the back by a crutch that a war disabled man was swinging."

Federal Minister

On June 7, 1955, Theodor Blank was appointed the first Federal Minister of Defense . He resigned from this office on October 16, 1956 as part of the first major cabinet reform of the Adenauer government. During his term of office, the task of procuring materials for the newly founded Bundeswehr fell; such as B. the armored personnel carrier HS 30 . Blank's successor as Federal Minister of Defense was his rival Franz Josef Strauss . After the federal election in 1957 , he was appointed Federal Minister for Labor and Social Affairs on October 29, 1957 . After the federal election in 1965 , he resigned from the federal government on October 26, 1965.

Awards and honors

In 2010, a new street was named in his honor in his former home, Brackel : Theodor-Blank-Allee. The barracks at the Rheine-Bentlage Army Airfield bears the name Theodor-Blank-Barracks in his honor.

Publications

  • Theodor Blank: From the Ahlen program to the Düsseldorf guiding principles - On the dogma history of the CDU . In: Alfred Müller-Armack (Hrsg.): Economic and financial policy under the sign of the social market economy. Festival ceremony for Franz Etzel . Seewald, Stuttgart 1967, p. 31 ff .

literature

  • Walter Henkels : 99 Bonn heads , revised and supplemented edition, Fischer-Bücherei, Frankfurt am Main 1965, p. 42f.
  • Arnold Sommer: Blank, Theodor Anton (Theo) . In: Hans Bohrmann (Ed.): Biographies of important Dortmunders. People in, from and for Dortmund . tape 3 . Klartext, Essen 2001, ISBN 3-88474-954-4 , p. 32 f .
  • Rudolf Vierhaus , Ludolf Herbst (eds.), Bruno Jahn (collaborators): Biographical manual of the members of the German Bundestag. 1949-2002. Vol. 1: A-M. KG Saur, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-598-23782-0 , pp. 73-74.

Web links

Commons : Theodor Blank  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ History of the CDU, Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung - Michael Hansmann / Hans-Otto Kleinmann, Theodor Blank, inventory signature ACDP: 01-098 in: http://www.kas.de/wf/de/37.8038/
  2. ↑ Werner Biermann, Konrad Adenauer, A Century of Life, Rowohlt Verlag Berlin, 2017
  3. ↑ History of the CDU, Konrad Adenauer Foundation, Michael Hansmann / Hans Otto Kleinmann, Theodor Blank inventory signature ACDP: 01-098
  4. ^ Theodor Blank at the North Rhine-Westphalia state parliament
  5. ^ Antonius John: Ahlener Program and Bonn Republic, 50 Years Ago: Ideas Race and Rivalries. Bouvier-Verlag, Bonn 1997, ISBN 3-416-02673-X .
  6. ↑ Peter Siebenmorgen, Franz Josef Strauss - A Life in Abundance, Siedler Verlag Munich 2015, p. 90
  7. ↑ Dieter Krüger, The Blank Office and the Planning of the Bundeswehr 1950-1955 in Military History, Journal for Historical Education 1 + 2 2005, p. 10ff.
  8. ↑ History of the Ermekeil barracks in Bonn in: http://www.ermekeilkaserne.de/ermekeilkaserne-Bonn-Geschichte-Bundswehr.html
  9. ↑ Dieter Krüger, The Blank Office and the Planning of the Bundeswehr 1950-1955 in Military History, Journal for Historical Education 1 + 2 2005, p. 10ff.
  10. ^ Dieter Krüger, The Blank Office and the Planning of the Bundeswehr 1950-1955 in Military History, Journal for Historical Education 1 + 2 2005, p. 12ff.
  11. ^ Cabinet reform: The Kassel Depesche . In: Der Spiegel . No. 42 , 1956 ( online ).
  12. ↑ Dortmund city gazette. Ostanzeiger , January 19, 2011.
  13. ^ BMVg.de: Minister of Defense visits the Rheine site. In: www.bmvg.de. Retrieved September 26, 2016 .
personal data
SURNAME Blank, Theodor
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Blank, Theodor Anton (full name); Blank, Theo
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (CDU), Member of the Bundestag, Member of the Bundestag
DATE OF BIRTH September 19, 1905
PLACE OF BIRTH Elz
DATE OF DEATH May 14, 1972
Place of death Bonn