At the age of 92: Gerhart Baum dead – FDP loses “uncomfortable impulse providers”

Former Federal Minister of the Interior and FDP politician Gerhart Baum is dead. He died at the age of 92, as the FDP and his law firm confirmed. The ARD had previously reported. According to his legal colleague Julius Reiter, Baum died on Saturday night in the Cologne University Clinic. Baum represented the left -liberal party wing of the FDP for decades and repeatedly spoke up publicly when he had the impression that the FDP drifted too much into neoliberal waters.

FDP boss Christian Lindner praised Baum as a great advocate of freedom and civil rights. “With Gerhart Baum, our country and the Free Democrats have lost one of the strongest voices for freedom, human rights and democracy,” said Lindner. “He was an independent personality with a critical judgment that our liberal family strengthened.” The FDP is grateful to Baum. “We will be missing his advice and critical look.”

Left -liberal opposition in your own party

Baum, alongside his friend Burkhard Hirsch, who died in March 2020, belonged to the last small group of social library FDP members, who came together with Hildegard Hamm-Brücher and then also with Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger in the Freiburg district. That meant quasi left -liberal opposition in his own party.

The FDP politician Marie-Egnes Strack-Zimmermann called Baum a great bound to civil rights. Baum was an “uncomfortable impulse conveyor” and a “persistent discussant” that “his party and party friends could irritate his party and his party friends,” she wrote on X. “None of us was spared. Nevertheless, he formed an important pole.”

FDP parliamentary group leader Christian Dürr called Baum an indomitable argument for liberal democracy. “His commitment to fundamental rights and his conviction that freedom and security must not be a contradiction are legacies that will continue to lead us.” Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck (Greens) and Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD) also recognized Baum.

Interior Minister under Helmut Schmidt

From 1978 Baum was Federal Minister of the Interior under SPD Chancellor Helmut Schmidt for four years-during the RAF terror. After the turn of the FDP from the SPD to the Union in 1982, the social -liberal coalition was over. Several – especially young – FDP members left the party at the time. Baum remained and was still FDP vice from 1982 to 1991.

“In view of the challenge of the terrorism of the RAF, it was Gerhart Baum’s deep conviction that a democratic society can and must deal with threats without falling into disrepair,” wrote Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier. “With Gerhart Baum we lose a person who has shaped the discourse in our country for many years.”

After leaving the Bundestag, he worked again as a lawyer. Until the end, he led successful constitutional complaints against state surveillance together with Hirsch and Leutheusser -Schnarrenberger: against the great Lausure attack, the data retention or the air security law of red -green to launch kidnapped passenger machines.

Worked on the book project

Baum recognized his Düsseldorf lawyer colleague Reiter as an exemplary lawyer. Baum and he were personally friends, said Reiter. As a passenger, he was a “exemplary lawyer” and a mentor for him. “We will miss him.” The two men worked together in the Düsseldorf law firm “Baum Reiter & Collegen”. Baum still worked on a book project and received a lot of visitors in the clinic, Reiter reported. He was still the day before yesterday. “He always liked to have been among people.”

Baum was an indomitable defender of the citizens’ and human rights and “a voice of reason, especially in times of social and political upheavals,” emphasized Henning Hönen, head of the FDP in North Rhine-Westphalia. Even after his active time in politics, Baum remained a “warning conscience”.

Baum, born on October 28, 1932, came from the Dresden educational middle class. Father and grandfather were also lawyers. The mother, a Russian, fled with the children after the bombing of Dresden in February 1945 to Lake Tegernsee. In 1950 the family moved to Cologne.