Bernhard Vogel is dead: Ex-Prime Minister and Record CDU politician

CDU politician Bernhard Vogel is dead. The former Prime Minister of Rhineland-Palatinate and Thuringia died at the age of 92, as the CDU Rhineland-Palatinate and the Konrad-Adenauer Foundation of the German Press Agency confirmed. The “Bild” newspaper had previously reported. Vogel holds the record as the head of government in Mainz and Erfurt with an term of 23 years in Mainz and Erfurt.

The then Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) wrote to him in 2007 on the occasion of his 75th birthday that his “historical uniqueness” would probably be reached by anyone else. Most recently, he lived in Speyer in Palatinate.

The current chairman of the Konrad-Adenauer Foundation, Norbert Lammert, paid tribute to the work of the deceased: “Bernhard Vogel gave an example of democratic culture in Rhineland-Palatinate through clear orientation and respect for the political opponent and made a sustainable contribution to the growing together of our reunited country.”

Vogel’s political career began in the 1960s and was closely connected to the name Helmut Kohl. After two years of the Bundestag, he became Minister of Culture in Rhineland-Palatinate in 1967-Kohl was then the prime minister-and profiled himself as an education politician. Vogel, for example, enforced the transition from the denomination school to the Christian community school.

In 1974 he replaced Kohl as CDU chief of CDU and prevailed against Heiner Geißler, whom Kohl had favored. Vogel followed two years later as Prime Minister on Kohl.

In 1988 Vogel lost a power struggle against Hans-Otto Wilhelm in the Rhineland-Palatinate CDU. After his election as CDU state chairman, Vogel resigned as Prime Minister. The following year he took over the chief position of the CDU-close Konrad Adenauer Foundation.

After the German reunification, the second career of Vogels began in 1992 as head of government in Thuringia. “Mainz was a risk. Thuringia was an adventure,” he said once. After eleven years he said goodbye to this office in 2003. Already in 2001 he had again become chairman of the Adenauer Foundation, which he remained until 2009. With his brother, the former SPD leader Hans-Jochen Vogel (1926-2020), and with party colleagues, he discussed political questions until old age.

Vogel often cited the 1988 flight day disaster in Ramstein in his term in Rhineland-Palatinate and the killing spree from 2002 in Erfurt when he was the prime minister of Thuringia.

Actually, the political scientist born on December 19, 1932 in Göttingen and grew up in Gießen wanted to be professor at a university. However, he could not answer whether he would have been successful in this position, Vogel once told the German Press Agency. “But I claim that I could do more in politics than as a scientist.”