Barshel, Uwe

Uwe Barschel grew up in a poor family. His mother worked as a dressmaker, his father, mathematician Heinrich Barschel was considered missing and probably died on April 1, 1945 in the battles near Berlin. He was brought up by his grandfather and grandmother, who lived in a refugee hut in Burnsen near Gesthacht . He studied at the city school of Gesthacht. Teachers described Barschel as a calm and serious young man, classmates considered him an ambitious careerist. In 1963, at the suggestion of a history teacher sympathetic to the National Socialists, Heinrich Kok, Uwe Barshel invited a war criminal Karl Dönitz , convicted by the Nuremberg Tribunal, to a school with a lecture. For an hour and a half, Dönitz presented his views in school in support of National Socialism . Neither the history teacher nor the students criticized this report, which led to a political scandal. Georg Ryuzen, the principal who gave permission for this lecture, committed suicide. The residents of Gesthacht accused the headmaster of the school of death of the media. After 17 years, Uwe Barshel, who served as Minister of the Interior of Schleswig-Holstein, was present at the Doenitz funeral.

After school, Uwe Barschel entered the University of Kiel , where he studied law, economics, political science and pedagogy. Having passed state exams, he received a law degree. In 1969-1970 he taught at the Kiel Higher Pedagogical School. In 1970 he defended his doctoral dissertation on the topic “Theoretical possibilities and limitations of a political party in the field of criminal law policy”, received a doctorate in legal sciences, in 1971 received a doctorate in philological sciences, defending a dissertation on the topic “Position of the Prime Minister Schleswig-Holstein in the light of the doctrine of the separation of powers. " In 1971 he received the right to practice law and worked as a lawyer and notary public, engaged in social activities and charity work. He has published several works in the field of public law and political sciences. On May 31, 1987, shortly before the start of the elections for the Landtag, Barschel survived a plane crash, remaining the only survivor of a plane crash at the Lübeck airport.

In 1960, Barshel joined the Youth Union , in 1962 - in the CDU. In 1967-1971 he headed the land organization of the Youth Union in Schleswig-Holstein. In 1969 he was elected deputy chairman of the CDU Schleswig-Holstein. In 1973-1981 he was chairman of the party in the Duchy of Lauenburg district.

Since 1971, Uwe Barschel was elected deputy of the Landtag Schleswig-Holstein. In the years 1971-1973, Barschel was the parliamentary representative of the Minister for Religious Affairs and the Government Commissioner for Youth and Sports. In 1973-1979 he led the CDU faction in the Landtag.

On July 7, 1973, Uwe Barschel married Freya Bismarck, a distant relative of Chancellor Otto von Bismarck . The spouses had four children.

On January 1, 1979, Uwe Barschel was appointed Minister of Finance in the government of Gerhard Stoltenberg . After the elections to the Landtag of 1979, Barschel held the post of Minister of the Interior of Schleswig-Holstein from July 1. In 1979, Barschel also became the representative of Schleswig-Holstein in the Bundesrat. A year later, as a deputy, Barschel participated in the parliamentary meeting of NATO . In 1981 and 1982, he chaired the conferences of interior ministers.

On October 4, 1982, Gerhard Stoltenberg became a member of the federal government of Helmut Kohl with the rank of Minister of Finance, on October 14, 1982, Uwe Barshel was elected as Prime Minister of Schleswig-Holstein. In the 1983 Landtag elections, the CDU, led by Barschel, received an absolute majority, collecting 49% of the vote.

September 12, 1987, the Saturday before the elections for the Landtag, it became known that Spiegel magazine in its issue on Monday after the election will publish information about the campaign initiated by Barshel in order to discredit his rival in the election of Björn Engholm . The magazine was based on information provided by Rainer Pfeiffer, a reporter for Axel-Springer-Verlag , specially invited for this purpose to the land government in Kiel and already had a criminal record for disseminating slanderous information. The next day, the CDU lost the election, collecting only 42.6% of the vote against 45.2% of the vote cast for the SPD. Four days after the election, Barschel declared that the charges against him were unfounded, giving his word of honor.

The CDU began to probe the possibilities of a coalition with the FDP , which stated that it was ready to negotiate with the CDU, but not with Uwe Barshel. Under pressure from his own party, Barschel announced his resignation from the post of prime minister on October 2, 1987, the duties of the prime minister were temporarily assigned to his deputy, Henning Schwartz . In the Landtag of Schleswig-Holstein, a committee was established to investigate the circumstances of the scandal, the work of which ultimately yielded no results.

A few years later, Björn Engholm was also forced to resign as a result of a new wave of scandal, when it turned out that he was aware of the contacts of the representatives of the SPD with Rainer Pfeiffer. As a result of the second investigation, initiated by the Landtag, it was found that it was not possible to prove the involvement of Prime Minister Barshel in the libelous campaign. It is not proven that Uwe Barschel was aware of the activities of his referent, approved or initiated it. However, for his defense, he forced his subordinates to give false affidavits.

On October 11, 1987, the day before his hearing on the Landtag committee, Barschel’s body without signs of life was discovered by Stern magazine reporter Sebastian Knauer at the Beau-Rivage in Geneva. Uwe Barshel in clothes was in the full bath of his room 317. According to official information, Barshel committed suicide. Some circumstances of the death of the politician from an overdose of drugs and the environment made him doubt the official version of suicide. Barshel flew to Geneva the day before from the Spanish island of Gran Canaria , where he was on vacation with his family, supposedly to meet an unknown informant who could provide Barshel with materials justifying him in his case. The funeral ceremony of farewell to the youngest prime minister of Germany took place on November 27, 1987 in Lubeck Cathedral . The grave of Uwe Barschel is located in Möln .

• Sebastian Knauer: Barschel - Die Akte. Originaldokumente eines ungelösten Kriminalfalls. 1. Auflage. B&S Siebenhaar Verlag, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-936962-56-7 .
• Wolfram Baentsch: Der Doppelmord an Uwe Barschel. 3. Auflage. Herbig-Verlag, München 2007, ISBN 978-3-7766-2523-3 .
• Michael Mueller, Rudolf Lambrecht, Leo Müller: Der Fall Barschel. Ein tödliches Doppelspiel. Propyläen, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-549-07325-4 .
• Norbert F. Pötzl: Der Fall Barschel. Anatomie einer deutschen Karriere. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1988; erweiterte Neuausgabe unter dem Titel Der Fall Barschel. Anatomie einer deutschen Karriere. War es mord? Rowohlt, Reinbek 1989, ISBN 3-499-18463-X .
• Cordt Schnibben, Volker Skierka: Macht und Machenschaften. Die Wahrheitsfindung in der Barschel-Affäre. Ein Lehrstück. Rasch und Röhring, Hamburg 1988, ISBN 978-3-89136-189-4 .
• Herbert Wessels: Ein politischer Fall. Uwe Barschel - die Hintergründe der Affäre. Deutscher Studien-Verlag, Weinheim 1988, ISBN 978-3-89271-076-9 .
• Munzinger-Archiv. Internationales Biographisches Archiv. 14/1988.
• Manfred Mays: Die unendliche Geschichte Barschel. Zweiteiliges Feature, gesendet bei hr2 am 10. und 17. Februar 2008.
• Joachim Siegerist: Das Testament des Uwe Barschel. Verlag Moritz Deter, 1988, ISBN 978-3-9801563-1-8 .
• Werner Kalinka: Der Fall B .: der Tod, der kein Mord sein darf. Ullstein, Frankfurt am Main / Berlin 1993, ISBN 3-548-36605-8 .
• Heinrich Wille: Ein Mord, der keiner sein durfte. Der Fall Uwe Barschel und die Grenzen des Rechtsstaates. Rotpunkt, Zürich 2011, ISBN 978-3-85869-462-1 .
• Die Dönitz-Affäre 1963. Der Großadmiral und die kleine Stadt. In: Sönke Zankel (Hrsg.): Skandale in Schleswig-Holstein. Beiträge zum Geschichtswettbewerb des Bundespräsidenten. Schmidt & Klaunig, Kiel 2012, ISBN 978-3-88312-419-3 , S. 13-70.