Erhard Eppler
| Erhard Eppler | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Minister for Economic Cooperation | |
|
In office 1968–1974 |
|
| Preceded by | Hans-Jürgen Wischnewski |
| Succeeded by | Egon Bahr |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
9 December 1926 Ulm |
| Political party | SPD |
| Occupation | Teacher |
Erhard Eppler (born 9 December 1926) is a German Social Democratic politician and founder of the GTZ.
Born in Ulm on 29 December 1926, Eppler grew up in Schwäbisch Hall 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 with a thesis on Elizabethan tragedy, and after completing his teacher training, he worked as a grammar school teacher in Schwenningen on the Neckar from 1953 until 1961.
Eppler became a member of the NSDAP 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, one of the founders of the Christian Democratic Union (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's policy of complete integration into the Western world. Eppler joined Heinemann's new party, the All-German People's Party (Gesamtdeutsche Volkspartei - GVP), in 1952, but like most members of the GVP, including Heinemann, he changed over to the Social Democratic Party of 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.
...
Wikipedia