Gert Bastian

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Gert Bastian 1987

Gert Bastian (March 26, 1923 - October 1992) was a German military officer and politician with the Green Party.

Born in Munich, Bastian volunteered to fight for Germany in World War Two at the age of nineteen. He served on the Eastern Front being wounded by a bullet in the right arm and in the head by a grenande fragment. He was also hit by American machine gun fire in France. After the war he started a business which failed and he rejoined the military. From 1956 to 1980 Bastian served in the Bundeswehr or German Federal Armed Forces, retiring as a divisional commander with the rank of Major General. During this period Bastian's politics changed radically. In the 1950s he had been a member of the Christian Social Union in his native Bavaria. Yet Bastian was also an opponent of the planned stationing of Medium-Range missiles with nuclear warheads in Europe and joined the peace movement. In 1981 he was the joint founder of a group called "Generals for Peace" set up by the East German Ministry for Public Security ("Stasi").

Bastian was, from March 29, 1983 until February 18, 1987, an elected member of the Greens in the German Federal Parliament. Between February 10, 1984 and March 18, 1986, he was an independent member of Parliament having separated from the Green's Parliamentary group several times over his opposition to the rotation principle for leadership then enforced in the Greens. He was then deselected by the Green Party.

In the 1980's, Bastien was, together with his partner Petra Kelly, of one of the most important members of the German Democratic Republic opposition in the West.

Bastian was found dead in Bonn on October 19, 1992 together with Petra Kelly. According to the police report Bastian shot Kelly dead in her sleep with his old service weapon and afterwards killed himself. No accurate time of death could be determined because of the delay in finding the corpses. He was buried in a north Munich cemetery.

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