Franz Josef Strauß
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Franz Josef Strauß (IPA: [fʁants jozɛf ʃtraʊs]) (September 6, 1915 – October 3, 1988) was a German politician (CSU) and long-time minister-president of the state of Bavaria. Press reports called him the "Strong Man of Europe" [1].
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[edit] Basic biography
[edit] Early years
Born as Franz Strauß in Munich as the second child of a butcher, Strauß studied germanistics, history and economics at the University of Munich from 1935 to 1939 where he had to become a member of the NSDStB-Nationalsozialistischen Studentenbund or Nazi Students Association as this was mandatory for students at that time. In World War II, he served in the German Wehrmacht, on the Western and Eastern Fronts. While on furlough, he passed the German state exams to become a teacher. After suffering from severe frostbites at the Eastern Front at the end of 1942, he served as an Offizier für wehrgeistige Führung (political officer/komisar) at the antiaircraft artillery school in Altenstadt, near Schongau. At the end of the war he held the rank of an Oberleutnant. Soon after the war he decided to change his name into Franz Josef Strauß. In 1957 Strauß married Marianne Zwicknagl with whom he had three children (Max Josef, Franz Georg and Monika (former Bavarian minister and member of the Bavarian parliament)).
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[edit] Political life
After the war, he was appointed deputy Landrat (county president) of Schongau by the American occupiers and was involved in founding the local CSU there. He became a member of the first Bundestag (Federal Parliament) in 1949 and, in 1953, Federal Minister for Special Affairs in the second cabinet of Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, in 1955 Federal Minister of Nuclear Energy, and in 1956 defense minister, charged with the build-up of the new Bundeswehr – the youngest man in this office to that date. He became chairman of the CSU in 1961.
[edit] Der Spiegel scandal
Strauß was forced to step down as defense minister in 1962, in the wake of the Spiegel scandal, in which Rudolf Augstein, owner and editor-in-chief of the influential Der Spiegel magazine, was arrested on his request for 103 days. After Strauß had to admit that he had lied to the parliament, he was forced to resign – although complaining that he was treated like a "Jew who had dared appear at an NSDAP party convention".
[edit] Rivalry between Kohl and Strauß
Strauß was appointed minister of the treasury again in 1966, in the cabinet of Kurt Georg Kiesinger. In cooperation with the SPD minister for economy, Karl Schiller, he developed a groundbreaking anticyclic policy; the two ministers, quite unlike in physical appearance and political background, were popularly dubbed Plisch und Plum, after two dogs in a 19th century cartoon by Wilhelm Busch.
After the SPD was able to form a government without the conservatives, in 1969, Strauß became one of the most vocal critics of Willy Brandt's Ostpolitik. On a journey to China in 1975, where he was received by Mao Zedong, Strauß became a political sensation. After Helmut Kohl's first run for chancellor in 1976 failed, Strauß cancelled the alliance between the CDU and CSU parties in the Bundestag, a decision which he only took back months later when the CDU threatened to extend their party to Bavaria (where the CSU holds a political monopoly for the conservatives). In the 1980 federal election, the CDU/CSU opted to put forward Strauß as their candidate for chancellor. Strauß had continued being critical of Kohl's leadership, so providing Strauß a shot at the chancellory may have been seen as an endorsement of either Strauß' policies or style (or both) over Kohl's. But many, if not most, observers at the time believed that the CDU had concluded that Helmut Schmidt's SPD was likely undefeatable in 1980, and felt that they had nothing to lose in running Strauß. Schmidt's easy win was seen by Kohl's supporters as a vindication of their man, and though the rivalry between Kohl and Strauß would persist for years, once the CDU/CSU was able to take power in 1982, Kohl was again their leader, where he remained until well past Strauß' death.
[edit] United States of Europe
Strauß was the author of a book called The Grand Design in which he set forth his views of the way in which the future unification of Europe should be decided.
Ever since the infamous Der Spiegel affair of the 1960s, he had also become the target of the broadcasting and publishing media blitz that Herbert W. Armstrong unleashed upon Europe through the daily offshore pirate radio station broadcasts by his son Garner Ted Armstrong, his magazine called The Plain Truth and his Ambassador College campus at Bricket Wood in Hertfordshire, England. Strauß was portrayed as being, with great probability, the coming Führer who would lead a United States of Europe into a prophetic and victorious future World War III against the USA and UK at some time between 1972 and 1975. For some strange reason in 1971 Franz Josef Strauß played along with the prophetic interest shown in him as Herbert W. Armstrong recalled in a 1983 letter: "I entertained him at dinner in my home in Pasadena, and he spoke to the faculty and students of Ambassador College. I have maintained contact with him." Strauß also appeared in an interview on The World Tomorrow television program.
[edit] Final decade of life
From 1978 until his death in 1988, Strauß was minister-president of Bavaria, possibly the most memorable figure to ever hold that office. After his defeat in the 1980 federal election, he retreated to commenting on federal politics from his safe seat in Bavaria. In the following years, he was the most visible critic of Kohl's politics in his own political camp, even after Kohl ascended to the Chancellorship. In 1983, he was primarily responsible for a loan of 3 billion Deutschmarks given to East Germany. This move was widely criticised even during Strauß's lifetime; it is today regarded by some as having artificially prolonged the life of the then-bankrupt communist state.
[edit] Visit to Albania
Strauß visited communist Albania on August 21, 1984, even while Enver Hoxha, the absolute dictator from the end of World War II until his death in 1985, was still alive. Strauß was one of the few Western leaders, if not the only one, to visit the isolationist Albania in decades. This fueled speculation that Strauß might be preparing the way for diplomatic links between Albania and West Germany but the visit did not result in anything concrete. The visit was seen as very hopeful by Albanians, who do not forgive their leaders for what they see as a missed opportunity 'to catch the Western train' long before communism fell in Eastern Europe.[citation needed]
[edit] Death
On October 1, 1988, Strauß collapsed while hunting with the Duke of Thurn and Taxis in the Thurn and Taxis forests, east of Regensburg. He died in a Regensburg hospital on October 3 without having regained consciousness. The causes contributing to his death, according to the memoires of the physician who treated him, were his obesity and the amount of fatty food and alcohol he had consumed shortly before he collapsed.
[edit] Legacy
Strauß shaped post-war Germany and polarized the public like few others. A vocal figurehead of conservatives and brilliant rhetorician, yet involved in several large-scale scandals, he was a red flag to the left. Still, most would agree that he was an extraordinary politician and managed to transform Bavaria from the once-agrarian state to one of the centers of technology in Germany that it is today. Munich's new airport was named after him in 1992 (see Franz Josef Strauß International Airport).
As an aerospace enthusiastic person, Strauss was one of the driving persons to create Airbus in the 1970s. Thus it was logical to give his name to the new airport in Munich.
[edit] References
- Franz Josef Strauß. The Grand Design: A European solution to German reunification. English translation: London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1965.
[edit] External links
- biography
- Website with Strauß quotations (in German)
- "Plisch und Plum" caricature (1967) by Luis Murschetz
- Memories of Pasadena by J. Orlin Grabbe (personal eyewitness observations concerning the personal interest of Herbert W. Armstrong in the career of Franz Josef Strauß as the future Führer of a United States of Europe)
| Preceded by Alfons Goppel |
Prime Minister of Bavaria 1978 – 1988 |
Succeeded by Max Streibl |
| Chairmen of the Christian Social Union of Bavaria |
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Josef Müller (1946-1949) | Hans Ehard (1949-1955) | Hanns Seidel (1955-1961) | Franz Josef Strauß (1961-1988) | Theodor Waigel (1988-1999) | Edmund Stoiber (1999-present) |
