Maria Peschel-Gutzeit worked for 30 years as a family judge in Hamburg before she became the first Senate President at the Hanseatic Higher Regional Court. She has now passed away at the age of 90.
The SPD politician and former Justice Senator in Hamburg and Berlin, Lore Maria Peschel-Gutzeit, is dead. The lawyer, who was a pioneer for women’s rights, died at the age of 90, as the Berlin SPD announced on Monday. The ex-judge held the office of Senator for Justice in the two city states several times: from 1991 to 1993 in Hamburg, from 1994 to 1997 in Berlin and from 1997 to 2001 again in Hamburg.
Born in Hamburg in 1932, Peschel-Gutzeit has been one of the most influential lawyers and legal politicians in Germany since the 1970s. For a time she was also chairwoman of the German Women Lawyers Association. According to Peschel-Gutzeit, he only joined the SPD in 1988 after a long career in the judicial service – in particular to promote women’s rights and the compatibility of work and family.
Maria Peschel-Gutzeit was friends with Alice Schwarzer
“My various socio-political criticisms and approaches, I don’t enforce them as a judge, I need political impetus,” she said in a 2020 interview with Deutschlandfunk about her switch to politics.
According to Peschel-Gutzeit, she preferred to get her concerns through in an argumentative way. “I am firmly convinced that most conflicts can be resolved through negotiation – but you have to come up with something,” she said in the interview. “I always said to Alice Schwarzer, with whom I am friends: We have similar goals, but very different means of implementation. You go out on the street and beat the drum, and I argue.”
Source: Stern
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