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Dr. h.c. Franz Josef Strauß (spelled Strauss in English) (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".
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Basic biography
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. 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 fuer wehrgeistige Fuehrung (kind of political officer) 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.
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 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.
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 influental 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".[2]
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 provided the Chancellor in 1969, Strauß became one of the most vocal critics of Willy Brandt's Ostpolitik. A journey to China in 1975, where he was received by Mao Zedong, became a political sensation. After Helmut Kohl's first run for chancellor in 1976 failed, he cancelled the unity of factions between the CDU and CSU parties in the Bundestag, 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). The rivalry between Kohl and Strauß would persist.
United States of Europe
Strauß was the author 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 broacasting and publishing media blitz that Herbert W. Armstrong has 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 with great probability as being 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 (http://www.aci.net/Kalliste/Pasadena_memories.htm) 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.
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 he ran as candidate for the office of Chancellor and was defeated by Helmut Schmidt in 1980, he retreated to commenting federal politics from the safe seat of his state. In the following years, even after Kohl eventually became chancellor in 1982, he was the most visible critic of Kohl's politics in his own political camp. In 1983, he was primarily responsible for a loan of 3 billion Deutschmarks given to East Germany, which is today regarded as an artificial elongation of the then-bankrupt state's lifetime.
Death
On October 1, 1988, Strauß collapsed while hunting with the Duke of Thurn und Taxis in the Thurn und Taxis forests, east of Regensburg. He died in a Regensburg hospital on October 3 without having regained consciousness.
Legacy
Strauß has 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 rag to liberals. Still, most would agree that he was a 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 airport was named after him in 1992 (see Franz Josef Strauß International Airport).
References
- Franz Josef Strauß. The Grand Design: A European solution to German reunification. English translation: London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1965.
External links
- biography (http://www.dhm.de/lemo/html/biografien/StraussFranzJosef/)
- Website with Strauß quotes (http://www.strauss.esmartweb.com/zitate.htm) (in German)
- "Plisch und Plum" caricature (1967) (http://www.dhm.de/lemo/objekte/pict/KontinuitaetUndWandel_karikaturMurschetzPlischUndPlum/) by Luis Murschetz
- Memories of Pasadena by J. Orlin Grabbe (http://www.aci.net/Kalliste/Pasadena_memories.htm) (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)de:Franz Josef Strauß