Gerhart Baum
| Gerhart Baum | |
|---|---|
Baum in 2008
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| Federal Minister of the Interior | |
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In office 8 June 1978 – 17 September 1982 |
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| Preceded by | Werner Maihofer |
| Succeeded by | Jürgen Schmude |
| Member of the Bundestag | |
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In office 1972 – 1994 |
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| Personal details | |
| Born |
28 October 1932 Dresden, Germany |
| Nationality | German |
| Political party | Free Democratic Party (FDP) |
| Alma mater | University of Cologne |
| Profession | Lawyer |
| Website | www.gerhart-baum.de |
Gerhart Rudolf Baum (born 28 October 1932 in Dresden) is a German politician of the Free Democratic Party (FDP) and a lawyer.
From 1972, Baum served as Parliamentary State Secretary at the Federal Ministry of the Interior under minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher, in the governments of Chancellor Willy Brandt and his successor Helmut Schmidt.
From 1978 until 1982, Baum was Federal Minister of the Interior. During his time in office, he liberalized routine loyalty investigations of candidates for public‐service jobs, a controversial practice intended to control radical activity that had led to a profound and disruptive debate about the extent of democracy in West Germany. In 1981, with the backing of the Economics Minister Otto Graf Lambsdorff, he asked the German car industry to agree on goals to tighten emissions standards and cut fuel consumption on a voluntary basis.
Following the collapse of the social–liberal coalition, Baum – alongside fellow FDP ministers Genscher, Lambsdorff, and Josef Ertl – resigned from the government on 18 September 1982.
Between 2000 and 2001, Baum and two other lawyers together represented about three-quarters of the Air France Flight 4590 crash victims' families. In May 2001, they reached a monetary settlement for compensation from Air France. According to people familiar with terms of the settlement, it was between $100 million and $125 million (114.1 million euros and 142.6 million euros), an extraordinarily high sum for a plane-crash settlement in Europe at the time.
From 2001 to 2003, Baum served as UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in Sudan.
In 2006, Baum presented a press freedom award to Berliner Zeitung for its resistance to an unpopular takeover by David Montgomery’s Mecom Group.
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