Erhard Eppler
Encyclopedia
Erhard Eppler is a German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 Social Democratic
Social Democratic Party of Germany
The Social Democratic Party of Germany is a social-democratic political party in Germany...

 politician
Politician
A politician, political leader, or political figure is an individual who is involved in influencing public policy and decision making...

 and founder of the GTZ
Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit
The Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit or GIZ is an international enterprise founded in 1975 by Erhard Eppler and owned by the German Federal Government, operating in many fields across more than 130 countries. It primarily works for public-sector organizations and is...

 http://www.gtz.de/en/top-themen/7222.htm.

Early years

Born in Ulm, Erhard Eppler grew up in Schwäbisch Hall
Schwäbisch Hall
Schwäbisch Hall is a town in the German state of Baden-Württemberg and capital of the district of Schwäbisch Hall. The town is located in the valley of the river Kocher in the north-eastern part of Baden-Württemberg....

, where his father was the headmaster of the local grammar school. From 1943 to 1945 he served as a soldier in an anti-aircraft unit. He passed his A-level exams in 1946 and studied English, German and history at Frankfurt, Berne and Tuebingen universities in order to be a teacher. In 1951 he did a PhD
PHD
PHD may refer to:*Ph.D., a doctorate of philosophy*Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*PHD finger, a protein sequence*PHD Mountain Software, an outdoor clothing and equipment company*PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...

 with a thesis on Elizabethan tragedy, and after completing his teacher training, he worked as a grammar school teacher in Schwenningen on the Neckar
Villingen-Schwenningen
Villingen-Schwenningen is a city in the Schwarzwald-Baar district in southern Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It has 80,941 inhabitants .-History:...

 from 1953 until 1961.

Eppler and political parties

Eppler became a member of the NSDAP
National Socialist German Workers Party
The National Socialist German Workers' Party , commonly known in English as the Nazi Party, was a political party in Germany between 1920 and 1945. Its predecessor, the German Workers' Party , existed from 1919 to 1920...

 in September 1943, at the age of 16. Later he spoke of this step as a "stupidity", but he also says, "It wasn't against my will that I ended up on some list" (of members of the NSDAP), "but I accepted it. Things were like that in those times."

While he was studying in Berne at the end of the 1940s, Eppler got to know Gustav Heinemann
Gustav Heinemann
Gustav Walter Heinemann, GCB was a German politician. He was Mayor of the city of Essen from 1946 to 1949, West German Minister of the Interior from 1949 to 1950, Minister of Justice from 1966 to 1969 and President of the Federal Republic of Germany from 1969 to 1974.-Early years and professional...

, one of the founders of the Christian Democratic Union
Christian Democratic Union (Germany)
The Christian Democratic Union of Germany is a Christian democratic and conservative political party in Germany. It is regarded as on the centre-right of the German political spectrum...

 (CDU). Heinemann became Minister of the Interior from 1949 to 1950, but then left the cabinet and later also the CDU together with several other party members who disagreed with Chancellor Konrad Adenauer
Konrad Adenauer
Konrad Hermann Joseph Adenauer was a German statesman. He was the chancellor of the West Germany from 1949 to 1963. He is widely recognised as a person who led his country from the ruins of World War II to a powerful and prosperous nation that had forged close relations with old enemies France,...

's policy of complete integration into the Western world. Eppler joined Heinemann's new party, the All-German People's Party
All-German People's Party
The All-German People's Party, in German Gesamtdeutsche Volkspartei was a political party in the Federal Republic of Germany. The party was founded on November 29, 1952 and ceased to exist in 1957...

 (Gesamtdeutsche Volkspartei - GVP), in 1952, but like most members of the GVP, including Heinemann, he changed over to the Social Democratic Party of Germany
Social Democratic Party of Germany
The Social Democratic Party of Germany is a social-democratic political party in Germany...

 (SPD) in 1956 after the GVP only attracted small numbers of voters in elections. The fact that active members of the Protestant Church like Eppler and Heinemann joined the SPD helped that party to overcome the prejudice that it was an "atheist" party, and that Christian values were only represented in the CDU.

During most years between 1970 and 1991 Eppler belonged to the SPD's National Executive Committee. He also chaired an SPD commission on tax reform, and a commission for formulating the party's basic values.

From 1973 to 1981 Eppler was the leader of the regional SPD in Baden-Württemberg
Baden-Württemberg
Baden-Württemberg is one of the 16 states of Germany. Baden-Württemberg is in the southwestern part of the country to the east of the Upper Rhine, and is the third largest in both area and population of Germany's sixteen states, with an area of and 10.7 million inhabitants...

. He was the SPD's candidate for the office of Prime Minister in that state, but his party was defeated by the CDU in the Baden-Wuerttemberg elections of 1976 and 1980.

Member of Parliament

Erhard Eppler was an MP in the parliament of the Federal Republic of Germany, the Bundestag
Bundestag
The Bundestag is a federal legislative body in Germany. In practice Germany is governed by a bicameral legislature, of which the Bundestag serves as the lower house and the Bundesrat the upper house. The Bundestag is established by the German Basic Law of 1949, as the successor to the earlier...

, from 1961 to 1976. Between 1972 and 1976 he represented the constituency of Heilbronn
Heilbronn
Heilbronn is a city in northern Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is completely surrounded by Heilbronn County and with approximately 123.000 residents, it is the sixth-largest city in the state....

 there. From 1976 he represented the constituency of Rottweil
Rottweil
Rottweil is a town in the south west of Germany and is the oldest town in the federal state of Baden-Württemberg.Located between the Black Forest and the Swabian Alb hills, Rottweil has about 25,000 inhabitants...

 in the Landtag of Baden-Württemberg
Landtag of Baden-Württemberg
The Landtag of Baden-Württemberg is the state diet of the German federal state of Baden-Württemberg. It convenes in Stuttgart and currently consists of 139 members of four Parties...

, the parliament of one of the states of which the Federal Republic consists. Until 1980 he was leader of the parliamentary SPD in the Landtag. On June 30, 1982, he resigned as an MP, after his election defeats of 1976 and 1980.

Minister

On October 16, 1968, Eppler was appointed Minister for Economic Cooperation in the "Grand Coalition" government of Chancellor Kurt Georg Kiesinger
Kurt Georg Kiesinger
Kurt Georg Kiesinger was a German politician affiliated with the CDU and Chancellor of West Germany from 1 December 1966 until 21 October 1969.-Early career and wartime activities:...

 (CDU) and Foreign Minister Willy Brandt
Willy Brandt
Willy Brandt, born Herbert Ernst Karl Frahm , was a German politician, Mayor of West Berlin 1957–1966, Chancellor of West Germany 1969–1974, and leader of the Social Democratic Party of Germany 1964–1987....

 (SPD). He continued in that office when Willy Brandt became Chancellor in 1969, but after his department was subject to severe cuts under the following Chancellor, Helmut Schmidt
Helmut Schmidt
Helmut Heinrich Waldemar Schmidt is a German Social Democratic politician who served as Chancellor of West Germany from 1974 to 1982. Prior to becoming chancellor, he had served as Minister of Defence and Minister of Finance. He had also served briefly as Minister of Economics and as acting...

 (SPD), in 1974, he stepped down in protest.

In his book "Not much time for the Third World", Eppler was one of the first to point out the connections between the protection of the environment and international development.

Political views

Eppler has always been considered to be an exponent of the left within the SPD. During Gerhard Schröder
Gerhard Schröder
Gerhard Fritz Kurt Schröder is a German politician, and was Chancellor of Germany from 1998 to 2005. A member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany , he led a coalition government of the SPD and the Greens. Before becoming a full-time politician, he was a lawyer, and before becoming Chancellor...

's second term as Chancellor (2002–2005), however, he supported the government's economic and social reforms, which were widely criticized as Neo-liberal
Neoliberalism
Neoliberalism is a market-driven approach to economic and social policy based on neoclassical theories of economics that emphasizes the efficiency of private enterprise, liberalized trade and relatively open markets, and therefore seeks to maximize the role of the private sector in determining the...

 (Agenda 2010
Agenda 2010
The Agenda 2010 is a series of reforms planned and executed by the German government which are aimed at reforming the German social system and labour market. The declared aim of Agenda 2010 is to improve economic growth and thus reduce unemployment....

). Moreover, although he had been close to the Peace movement
Peace movement
A peace movement is a social movement that seeks to achieve ideals such as the ending of a particular war , minimize inter-human violence in a particular place or type of situation, often linked to the goal of achieving world peace...

 of the nineteen-eighties, he supported the foreign policy of the Schröder government and approved of German participation in the military interventions in Kosovo
Kosovo
Kosovo is a region in southeastern Europe. Part of the Ottoman Empire for more than five centuries, later the Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohija within Serbia...

 in 1999 and in Afghanistan
Afghanistan
Afghanistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world...

 since 2001. But in spite of his general loyalty to his party's leadership, he was unhappy especially with much of its economic policy when in government.

Social involvement

After his retreat from federal politics, Eppler involved himself more in his work in the Protestant Church
Evangelical Church in Germany
The Evangelical Church in Germany is a federation of 22 Lutheran, Unified and Reformed Protestant regional church bodies in Germany. The EKD is not a church in a theological understanding because of the denominational differences. However, the member churches share full pulpit and altar...

. From 1981 to 1983 and from 1989 to 1991 he was president of the Deutscher Evangelischer Kirchentag
Deutscher Evangelischer Kirchentag
The Deutscher Evangelischer Kirchentag is a movement of lay members of the Evangelical Church in Germany...

 ("German Protestant Church Congress").

He is also a member of the "Wacholderhof Association", which promotes international cooperation, fair trade, and environmental sustainability, and of the "Association of Protestant Academics in Germany".

Eppler's numerous publications show his political and social involvement, too. They deal with a wide range of subjects which concern the political situation in Germany, the economy, but also general questions of developments in politics and society. In 2006, one of his books on the role of the state was honoured with the prize Das politische Buch 2006 by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation
Friedrich Ebert Foundation
The Friedrich Ebert Foundation is a German political foundation associated with the Social Democratic Party of Germany , yet independent of it...

.
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