Baum, Gerhart

Gerhart Baum was born into an educated bourgeois family, his grandfather and father were lawyers. Mother is Russian. After the bombing of Dresden in February 1945, Gerhart's mother with three children first went to Tegernsee. In 1950, Baum moved to Cologne. Gerhart's father died in Soviet captivity. After graduating from school, Baum studied law at the University of Cologne, and in 1957 he successfully passed the first state exam for lawyers. After an internship in 1961, he passed the second exam. He worked as a lawyer in Cologne, in 1962-1972 he was a member of the board of the Federal Association of German Unions of Employers. In 1994, he returned to the legal profession and since 2007 is a senior partner in the law office of Baum, Reiter & Collegen, specializing in protecting the rights of investors and consumers. Gerhart Baum represented the relatives of the victims of the Ramstein crash and the crash of Concord , as well as Soviet citizens who were driven into forced labor in Germany.

In 1954 he joined the FDP . In 1972-1994 he was a deputy of the Bundestag . In 1972-1978, Baum was the parliamentary secretary of the Ministry of the Interior . In 1978-1982, he served as Minister of the Interior. From 1982 to 1991, he served as deputy chairman of the FDP.

Gerhart Baum married a second marriage, he has three children from his first marriage, lives in Cologne and Berlin.

• Die Welt: Cultural Advocate (German)