Wolfgang Nowak (lawyer)

Patrick Diamond and Wolfgang Nowak.

Wolfgang Nowak (born March 27, 1943 in Berlin ) is a German lawyer and former SPD politician; he resigned from the party in 2005.

Life

After starting out as a member of the staff of the then science and later school minister Hans Schwier in North Rhine-Westphalia , he was State Secretary in the Saxon State Ministry for Culture from 1990 to the end of 1994 . After reunification (October 3, 1990) Saxony was again a federal state; the Biedenkopf government under Prime Minister Kurt Biedenkopf created an administrative structure based on the West German model; Nowak built a new school system, a school administration and a new ministry of education. In 1998 he set up the Erich Pommer Institute for Media Law, Media Economics and Media Research at the Film University Babelsberg Konrad Wolf on behalf of the state government of Brandenburg , of which he was director until he was appointed State Secretary in 1999 by the Saxon state government. The Saxon state government then loaned Nowak to the Federal Chancellery , where, as Ministerial Director, he became head of the newly established department for political analysis and questions of principle. There he worked for Gerhard Schröder (SPD), who has been Federal Chancellor since the 1998 Bundestag election . In October 2002 Nowak's replacement became known, in November 2002 he was replaced.

From the beginning of 2003 to 2012 he was managing director of the Alfred Herrhausen Gesellschaft , the international forum of Deutsche Bank . Today he is a non-resident senior fellow of the US think tank Brookings Institution , a fellow of the NRW School of Governance and a member of the Russian Valdai Club and on the advisory board of the Berlin office of the American Jewish Committee .

From 2012 onwards, he said he traveled several times on unofficial missions to North Korea and allegedly held talks with the top government there. Only what Nowak reported about travel dates, clients, results and financing is publicly known.

Others

The job title "Jurist" refers to a law degree; a legal clerkship is just as unoccupied as a place of study or a final exam. Nowak joined Hans Schwier in 1980 in the NRW Ministry of Research and later in the Ministry of Education in 1983. Nothing is publicly known about activities prior to 1980. His activities in the political arena (in Düsseldorf as an advisor to the minister, in Dresden as state secretary, in the chancellery as an employee in the planning department) were always that of an employed person, not that of an independent politician in the true sense. In the Cabinet Biedenkopf I two ministers (Minister of Economic Affairs came Kajo Schommer and Finance Minister Georg Milbradt ) and five secretaries of state from the Western provinces. After their appointment, they initially lived in hotel rooms; There was a shortage of living space in Dresden . In October 1990, Prime Minister Kurt Biedenkopf offered them to move into rooms in his service villa (a former Stasi guest house on Schevenstrasse in Dresden). Der Spiegel called this "Germany's first and only residential community for ruling politicians". Nowak was the only SPD member in this shared apartment .

Web links

• André Hatting: Everyone lives happily beyond their means . Interview with Wolfgang Nowak on Deutschlandradio Kultur . In: Local time , May 8, 2012
• Gabi Wuttke: Horrible figures . Interview with Wolfgang Nowak on Deutschlandradio Kultur. In: Local time , July 21, 2011.
• Markus Verbeet , Alfred Weinzierl: Uprising of the dwarfs . In: Der Spiegel . No. 48 , 2008 ( online - interview with Wolfgang Nowak on the Saxon triumph in the Pisa country comparison).
• Wolfgang Nowak: Failing successfully . In: WELT-online , October 14, 2006
• Tina Hildebrandt , Stephan Lebert : The Chancellor and the dear dwarfs . Interview with Wolfgang Nowak after his dismissal about the balance of power in the Federal Chancellery. In: Die Zeit , No. 17/2005
• Wolfgang Nowak: Exquisite maturity - the newspaper must play an essential role in media education - as a corrective against the fleetingness of television images. In: Die Zeit No. 36/1998.
• Martin Doerry , Hans Leyendecker : Caught in a cobweb . In: Der Spiegel . No. 41 , 1991 ( online interview with Wolfgang Nowak about new ways out of the school chaos).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Homepage of the Erich Pommer Institute
2. ↑ spiegel.de October 23, 2002: Back chairs in the Chancellery
3. ↑ [1]
4. ^ Homepage of the Alfred Herrhausen Society ( Memento from June 27, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
5. ^ Homepage of the Brookings Institution
6. ^ Homepage of the NRW School of Governance
7. ↑ homepage of the Valdai Club ( Memento of 29 September 2009 at the Internet Archive )
8. ↑ Advisory Board ( Memento from February 23, 2013 in the web archive archive.today )
9. ↑ Der Spiegel 9/2018: What a secret diplomat experienced on his mission in North Korea
10. ↑ Der Spiegel 31/1991: " Power center in the kitchen"