Walter Wallmann

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Walter Wallmann (1982)

Walter Wallmann (* 24. September 1932 in Uelzen , † 21st September 2013 in Frankfurt am Main ) was a German lawyer and politician of the CDU .

From 1977 to 1986 he was Lord Mayor of Frankfurt am Main , from 1986 to 1987 Federal Minister for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety , from 1987 to 1991 the sixth Prime Minister of the State of Hesse and from 15 May to 31 October 1987 the 39th President of the Federal Council.

Life

Studies and PhD

After graduating from high school in 1952, Wallmann began studying law, political science and politics at the Philipps University in Marburg , which he completed with two state law exams, which he took in Frankfurt am Main. In the summer semester of 1952 he joined the Marburg fraternity of Germania, from which he and other members were expelled during the so-called Petri affair in the winter semester of 1956/57. Wallmann joined the CDU as early as 1961. In 1965 he was the criminal lawyer Karl Alfred Hall at the University of Marburg with a thesis to criminal problem of corporal punishment right of teachers with special reference to the applicable constitutional law for Dr. iur. PhD .

Activities as judge and beginnings in the CDU

He became district chairman of the Junge Union in Central Hesse and a member of the Hessian state parliament . At the same time he worked as a judge at the Kassel District Court , as well as at the Rotenburg an der Fulda District Court and at the Gießen District Court until 1967 . In 1967 Walter Wallmann became deputy state chairman of the CDU Hessen and in 1968 also chairman of the CDU parliamentary group in the state parliament.

Member of the Bundestag

After the federal election in 1972 , he left the Hessian state parliament and became a member of the German parliament . Here he became a member of the parliamentary group committee in 1973. From 1974 to 1975 he was chairman of the committee of inquiry into the Guillaume affair , for which he received much praise and recognition. In 1976 he became the parliamentary managing director of the CDU / CSU parliamentary group .

Failed election as Mayor of Marburg

In February 1970, the city ​​council of Marburg elected Wallmann as a candidate from the CDU , FDP and a constituency against the previous incumbent Georg Gaßmann as mayor. However, this choice turned out to be invalid. In the re-election, the now SPD candidate Hanno Drechsler prevailed against Wallmann.

Lord Mayor of Frankfurt am Main

Wallmann resigned from the Bundestag in 1977 after the CDU surprisingly won an absolute majority in the local elections in Frankfurt am Main and the incumbent Mayor Rudi Arndt (SPD) resigned. The failure of the SPD in Frankfurt was seen as a consequence of the red felt (in Frankfurt the donation affair of the Frankfurt SPD ), the regional reform in Hesse , the school policy, but also as an aftermath of the Frankfurt house-to-house war . Wallmann was also the top candidate in Frankfurt and Marburg in the local elections in Hesse and has now become mayor of the city of Frankfurt am Main.

Wallmann pursued a generous public building policy, for example he pushed through the reconstruction of the half-timbered houses on the Römerberg (Ostzeile) and supported the citizens' initiative to restore the old opera to a concert and event building. He also took care of the renovation of the Frankfurt train station district and laid the foundation stone for the museum embankment .

He was also involved in foreign policy, and in 1980 he further expanded German- Israeli relations through a friendship treaty between Frankfurt and Tel Aviv . On his initiative, the City of Frankfurt has also been running a visit program for Jewish and politically or religiously persecuted former Frankfurt citizens since 1980. A year earlier, in 1979, he had also signed a friendship treaty with the Egyptian capital Cairo in the hope of peace in the Middle East .

In 1982 he was elected regional chairman of the CDU in Hesse and in 1985 he was elected deputy national chairman of the party. From 1985 to 1986, in his role as Lord Mayor, he was also President of the German Association of Cities .

First Federal Environment Minister

In response to the Chernobyl disaster Wallmann was of Chancellor Helmut Kohl on June 6, 1986 as the first Federal Minister for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety in the Cabinet appointed. Important state regulations during his roughly eleven-month term of office were the amendment of the Motor Vehicle Tax Act to introduce low-emission cars and the Washing and Cleaning Agents Act of March 5, 1987, which was replaced by a new law in May 2007.

The term “ Wallmann valve ” for the pressure relief valve, which is intended to prevent the full-pressure containment from bursting in the event of a core melt , also comes from his tenure as Federal Environment Minister .

After the Hessian CDU had narrowly won the state election together with the FDP under its top candidacy, Wallmann resigned on April 23, 1987 after less than a year in office as Environment Minister.

Prime Minister of Hesse

Wallmann became the first Christian Democratic Prime Minister in Hesse . In addition, he assumed the role of Federal Council President until October 31, 1987, which his predecessor Holger Börner (SPD) held until the state election .

During his tenure in 1987, there was a serious incident in reactor block A of the Biblis nuclear power plant , which the operator RWE and the responsible authorities tried to cover up for over a year. This led to a loss of confidence in his government.

In 1989 Wallmann was initially involved in a central scandal, which only later shifted to his head of the firm, Alexander Gauland . In 1987 Wallmann personally awarded the Federal Cross of Merit to the academic staff member of the CDU parliamentary group and his friend Wolfgang Egerter, at the suggestion of the Sudeten German Landsmannschaft, and at the ceremony scheduled in his State Chancellery, he promised: “You will continue to be one of my closest collaborators in the future stand by your side. ”Alexander Gauland, then head of the State Chancellery, appointed Egerter in 1989 as coordinator between the state government and the churches. In the course of this change, Rudolf Wirtz , who had been head of the liaison office between the state government and the churches for many years and who had de facto performed the function, was transferred against his will. Wirtz then sued. The first instance also found that Egerter's appointment had been made “for irrelevant reasons” and that “party political merits [...] should not play a role in the creation of posts”. The affair won initially by at scandal force the mirror Wallmann's speci Egerter nationalist machinations accused and headlined: ". Hesse's Christian Democrat Prime Minister Walter Wallmann wants to make a right-wing extremists to his church expert" That the scandal later named affair Gauland went down in the annals, was because Alexander Gauland perjured to justify the transfer of Wirtz, then successfully refused to inspect the files on the basis of § 99 VwGO , the opposition demanded Gauland's dismissal in 1990 and the judiciary asked the two lawyers Wallmann and Gauland, v. a. but just Gauland, ultimately let everything go.

Another scandal occurred in 1990 when the so-called "tulip bulb affair" became public. Walter Wallmann had financed gardening work on his private house through the state treasury. This led to a further loss of image.

Withdrawal from politics

In the 1991 state election , his coalition of CDU and FDP no longer achieved the required majority. Wallmann therefore left office on April 5, 1991 and renounced the role of opposition leader . He also resigned his state parliament mandate and lost the CDU state chairmanship in an internal power dispute to Manfred Kanther . From then on he worked as a lawyer in the private sector . In 1995 Wallmann became district chairman of Frankfurt am Main and officially retired in 1997 for health reasons. Martin Walser's book “Finks War”, published in 1996, is likely to have played a role in the final withdrawal. Walser's book is heavily based on the extensive documents of Rudolf Wirtz and exposed in detail the Gauland affair, including the lack of the rule of law in its legal management. So it caused negative attention for Wallmann beyond city and state politics.

Walter Wallmann lived in Idstein with his wife Margarethe. He had a son. Since the beginning of 2009, the couple lived again in Frankfurt am Main near the Mousonturm in the Ostend district .

CDU donation affair

In 1983 a total of 8 million DM from the Hessian CDU was transferred abroad and remittances disguised as bequests or loans. At that time, Walter Wallmann was CDU regional chairman. However, no involvement in the CDU donation affair could be proven. In his testimony in November 2000, he stated that he knew that the financial affairs were in the good hands of the then Secretary General of the Hessian CDU Manfred Kanther and the treasurer Casimir Prinz zu Sayn-Wittgenstein , so that he never had any doubts about Manfred Kanther's competence. He also stated on the record that he was certain that Roland Koch had also not known about the money and, like Wallmann himself, was completely clueless.

Honors

Ignatz Bubis Prize

Honorary grave in the Frankfurt main cemetery , 2015

On January 21, 2007, he received the Ignatz Bubis Prize for Understanding in the Paulskirche in Frankfurt, endowed with 50,000 euros . The Board of Trustees justified its decision with the fact that Wallmann “worked in an outstanding way for understanding and tolerance and set an example”. The then Lord Mayor of Frankfurt, Petra Roth , as well as the Vice President of the Central Council of Jews in Germany and Chairman of the Jewish Community in Frankfurt , Salomon Korn , praised his commitment in the area of ​​town twinning in particular.

Further awards

In 1979 he was awarded the Honorary Prize of the Hermann Ehlers Foundation , in 1982 the Freiherr vom Stein Prize and in 1990 the Great Cross of Merit with Star and Shoulder Ribbon of the Federal Republic of Germany. In 1996 he received the Wilhelm Leuschner Medal of the State of Hesse. Wallmann is honorary chairman of the Hessian CDU and has been awarded the Hessian Order of Merit since 2003 .

On his 77th birthday, September 24, 2009, Wallmann was made an honorary citizen of the city of Frankfurt. This made him the first post-war mayor of Frankfurt to be awarded honorary citizenship. Wallmann was also an honorary member of Eintracht Frankfurt .

family

Wallmann comes from a political family. His father, a secondary school teacher, was a member of the German People's Party (DVP).

His brother Wilhelm Wallmann was Wiesbaden's mayor, and his daughter, his niece Astrid Wallmann , was elected to the Hessian state parliament in the 2009 state elections.

Wallmann's son Walter junior was elected on March 19, 2013 by the Hessian state parliament as the new President of the Hessian State Audit Office.

Cabinets

Publications

  • In the light of the Paulskirche. Memoirs of a Political. Goetz, Potsdam 2002, ISBN 3-00-009956-5 .
  • The present of history , Societäts-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2001, ISBN 3-7973-0769-1 .
  • The price of progress. Contributions to political culture. Deutsche Verlags-anstalt, Stuttgart 1983, ISBN 3-421-06140-8 .

literature

Web links

Commons : Walter Wallmann  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Günter Mick: On the death of Walter Wallmann. Serving the community . In: FAZ , September 22, 2013
  2. ↑ Honorary Chairman Dr. Walter Wallmann ( Memento from December 22, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  3. ^ The word of the old gentlemen . In: Der Spiegel . No. 34 , 1957, pp. 29 ff . ( online ).
  4. ^ Walter Wallmann ( Memento from October 26, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  5. ↑ a b Tolerant and cosmopolitan - Award for Walter Wallmann ( Memento from June 30, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  6. ↑ a b https://www.zeit.de/1993/28/seine-schwaeche-ist-staerke
  7. ↑ frankfurt.de, accessed on Feb. 24, 2020
  8. ↑ a b Tolerant and cosmopolitan - Award for Walter Wallmann ( Memento from June 30, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  9. ↑ bfr.bund.de
  10. ↑ Undressed world. Hesse's Christian Democratic Prime Minister Walter Wallmann wants to turn a right-wing extremist into his church specialist. In: Der Spiegel . No. 12 , 1989 ( online ).
  11. ^ Wallmann, Walter * 1932 former Prime Minister of Hesse D .; Lord Mayor of Frankfurt a. D. ( Memento from June 30, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  12. ↑ https://frankfurter-personenlexikon.de/node/4202
  13. ↑ faz.net: Portrait: Walter Wallmann "That was your best speech ever"
  14. ↑ Berliner Zeitung of November 13, 2000: Ex-Prime Minister Wallmann confirms ignorance about black accounts of the Hessen CDU
  15. ↑ pr-inside.com
  16. ^ Hermann Ehlers Prize
  17. ↑ https://archive.today/20130412075046/http://www.hr-online.de/website/rubriken/nachrichten/indexhessen34938.jsp?rubrik=34954&key=standard_document_47840017 hr-online.de; Retrieved March 24, 2013.
personal data
SURNAME Wallmann, Walter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lawyer and politician (CDU), MdL, MdB
DATE OF BIRTH September 24, 1932
PLACE OF BIRTH Uelzen
DATE OF DEATH 21st September 2013
Place of death Frankfurt am Main