Hans-Jochen Vogel
Encyclopedia
Politician
A politician, political leader, or political figure is an individual who is involved in influencing public policy and decision making...
of 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...
.
Early years and professional career
Hans-Jochen Vogel attended grammar school in Göttingen and in GießenGießen
Gießen, also spelt Giessen is a town in the German federal state of Hesse, capital of both the district of Gießen and the administrative region of Gießen...
, where he did his A-levels in 1943. Although he was an active Catholic, he joined the Hitler Youth
Hitler Youth
The Hitler Youth was a paramilitary organization of the Nazi Party. It existed from 1922 to 1945. The HJ was the second oldest paramilitary Nazi group, founded one year after its adult counterpart, the Sturmabteilung...
and even became one of its squad leaders (Scharführer
Scharführer
Scharführer was a Nazi Party title that was used by several paramilitary organizations from 1925 to 1945. Translated as “Squad Leader”, the title of Scharführer can trace its origins to the First World War, where a Scharführer was often a Sergeant or Corporal who commanded special action or shock...
). "… in spite of all my doubts about details it did not occur to me at the time that you can, or even must, resist the state. Especially if I consider the biographies of other young people, for instance, Sophie and Hans Scholl, who came to completely different conclusions. I lived with my parents in Gießen then, I saw the synagogue burn. And nobody helped, on the contrary, the police and the firebrigade made the fire even worse. But not even that really opened my eyes."
In July 1943, at the age of 17, Vogel was conscripted. At the end of the war he was a non-commissioned officer. He was captured by the Americans in Italy. On his return from prison camp he worked as a transport worker for a short while, before he was able to study law
Law
Law is a system of rules and guidelines which are enforced through social institutions to govern behavior, wherever possible. It shapes politics, economics and society in numerous ways and serves as a social mediator of relations between people. Contract law regulates everything from buying a bus...
in Marburg and Munich. He received his doctorate ("summa cum laude") in 1950.
His professional career began in February 1952, when he became a junior official in the Bavarian Ministry of Justice. At the age of 28 he was a county court judge, and in the following year he was appointed chairman of a commission in the Bavarian Prime Minister's Office which was to review Bavarian law for a new survey published by the Bavarian state parliament. Munich City Council made him their legal secretary in 1958.
Vogel and the Social Democratic Party of GermanySocial Democratic Party of GermanyThe Social Democratic Party of Germany is a social-democratic political party in Germany...
(SPD)
Hans-Jochen Vogel became a member of the SPD in 1950. Although he was only 34 years old, he was elected Mayor of Munich as the candidate of the SPD on March 27, 1960, with 64.3% of the vote. His popularity increased even more, partly due to his success in tackling the city's traffic problems, and he was re-elected in 1966 with 77.9%. The fact that Munich was chosen as the venue of the 1972 Olympic Games, which had additional beneficial effects on town planning and traffic projects, was to a large extent a result of his efforts. When Vogel became the leader of the Bavarian Social Democrats and also a member of the executive of the Social Democratic Party of Germany in 1972, he resigned as Mayor of Munich and passed this office on to Georg Kronawitter. He describes his Munich years in his book Die Amtskette ("The Chain of Office"), which was published in the same year.
In the General Elections of November 19, 1972, Vogel was the top candidate of the Bavarian SPD; two years later he was the SPD's top candidate in the elections for the Bavarian State Parliament. Whereas he could not prevent a resounding victory of the CSU (Christian Social Union of Bavaria
Christian Social Union of Bavaria
The Christian Social Union in Bavaria is a Christian democratic and conservative political party in Germany. It operates only in the state of Bavaria, while its sister party, the Christian Democratic Union , operates in the other 15 states of Germany...
), he himself gained the best result for any SPD politician in Bavaria after the Second World War. His popularity also showed itself in the General Elections of 1976, when he alone of all the SPD Munich candidates did not lose his constituency to the CSU.
A new challenge arose in 1981. Dietrich Stobbe stepped down as Mayor of Berlin, and Hans-Jochen Vogel was asked to be his successor and take charge of a deeply divided Berlin SPD. He created a unique "Berlin way" of dealing with the problem of "occupied" houses by granting contracts to the occupiers, while preventing any new occupations at the same time.
Although he managed to successfully deal with his party's difficulties to a large extent, the SPD lost the following Berlin elections, which took place only a few months after Vogel had taken office.
During the following year Vogel was Leader of the Opposition in the parliament of Berlin, before becoming the SPD's top candidate for the German General Elections of March 6, 1983. 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...
had been toppled as chancellor by the CDU
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...
leader, Helmut Kohl
Helmut Kohl
Helmut Josef Michael Kohl is a German conservative politician and statesman. He was Chancellor of Germany from 1982 to 1998 and the chairman of the Christian Democratic Union from 1973 to 1998...
, and did not want to be the SPD's top candidate again. Vogel filled the breach. Disarmament and the problems of the labour market were at the centre of his campaign. But Kohl won the elections.
Minister, Leader of the Parliamentary SPD, and Party Leader
In December 1972 Chancellor Willy BrandtWilly 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....
made Vogel Minister for Regional Planning, Building, and Urban Development; Brandt's successor, Helmut Schmidt, made him Minister of Justice in 1974.
After the elections of 1983 Vogel was one of the Berlin MPs in the German parliament. Herbert Wehner
Herbert Wehner
Herbert Richard Wehner was a German politician. A former member of the Communist Party, he joined the Social Democrats after World War II...
, the previous Leader of the Parliamentary SPD, nominated him as his successor, and he held that office until 1991.
Under his leadership the Parliamentary SPD turned against atomic energy after the Chernobyl disaster of 1986.
From 1987 to 1991 Vogel was also the Leader of the Social Democratic Party.
He was an MP in the Bundestag until 1994. "I've never pushed myself into the foreground", he said of himself.
After 1994 Vogel withdrew from active politics. But he has continued to be a member of the project "Against forgetting, in favour of democracy", which tries to spread basic democratic values, as a contrast to the dictatorships of the Nazis
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
and of the SED. Vogel was one of its founders in 1993 and its first chairman.
He received the Galinsky Prize for promoting a better understanding between the Jewish community and its social surroundings (1998) and the highest prize of the Central Council of the Jews in Germany, the Leo Baeck Prize (2001).
From 2001 to 2005 Vogel belonged to the National Ethics Council on the ethical aspects of the questions of biotechnology and its consequences for individuals and society.
Personal characteristics
Originally on the right wing of the SPD, Hans-Jochen Vogel became more and more liberal in his views, for instance, with regard to the legislation about asylum-seekers, referenda, or the protection of personal data from the state. A fact-finding mission to twelve successor states of the former Soviet Union in 1992, when he met numerous presidents, ministers, but also leaders of the opposition, of the Orthodox Church, and of Islam, broadened his outlook, too.As far as his party was concerned, Vogel was a mediator between the various wings and a centre of integration. But his loyalty and devotion to the SPD did not prevent him from seeking co-operation with the other parties. As the chairman of his party's delegates in a parliamentary commission for reviewing the constitution, he achieved the inclusion of the principles of the protection of the environment and of the promotion of women in society as political aims in the Basic Law. Nevertheless, as he said in his final speech in parliament, he would have liked to see a better representation of East German values in the German constitution after unification.
Hans-Jochen Vogel himself summed up his political attitude best in the following statement: "I am a Social Democrat who would like to reconcile something of a vision with the rather stringent and inexorable knowledge that politics cannot be conducted with clouds of words, but with solid work and craftsmanship."
Vogel is the older brother of CDU politician Bernhard Vogel.