Bernd Schmidbauer

Bernd Schmidbauer
Member of the Bundestag for Rhein-Neckar
In office 29 March 1983 – 27 October 2009
Preceded by	Alfred Hubertus Neuhaus
Succeeded by	Stephan Harbarth
Personal details
Born	(1939-05-29) 29 May 1939 (age 85) Pforzheim
Political party	CDU
Alma mater	Karlsruhe Institute of Technology
Awards	Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany – Officer's Cross Decoration of Honour for Services to the Republic of Austria in Silver[1]

Bernd Schmidbauer (born 29 May 1939 in Pforzheim) is a former German politician and member of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU).

He was Parliamentary State Secretary to the Federal Minister for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety from January to December 1991 and Minister of State to the Federal Chancellor from 1991 to 1998, as well as coordinator of the intelligence services.^[2]

Life

After graduating from high school in 1959, Schmidbauer studied physics, chemistry and biology at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology,^[3] where he passed the scientific examination in 1967 and the pedagogical examination in 1969. He then worked as a teacher at the Boxberg Gymnasium in Heidelberg, most recently as director of studies.

Bernd Schmidbauer is married and has three children.

Political career

From 1971 to 1989, Schmidbauer was a member of the district council of the Rhine-Neckar district and had been chairman of the CDU parliamentary group here since 1976.

From 1983 to 2009, he was a member of the German Bundestag as a directly elected member of parliament for the Rhine-Neckar constituency.^[4] From 1987 to 1990, he was chairman of the Enquête Commission on Precautions for the Protection of the Earth's Atmosphere. In addition, he headed the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety Working Group of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group in the Bundestag from 1988 to 1990.

On 24 January 1991, Schmidbauer was appointed Parliamentary State Secretary to the Federal Minister for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety in the federal government led by Chancellor Helmut Kohl. As early as December 18, 1991, he moved to the Federal Chancellery as Minister of State to the Chancellor. Here he was commissioner for the federal intelligence services:^[5] the Federal Intelligence Service, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and the Military Counter-Intelligence Service.^[6]

Because of his tendency to become active himself in the field of intelligence, Schmidbauer was given the nickname "008" - a reference to James Bond alias 007.^[7] In 1992, for example, two German hostages were released in Lebanon, where Schmidbauer was involved in the tough negotiations. In 1994, he secured the release of Helmut Szimkus, a German sentenced to death in Iran. Schmidbauer also had a role in the Plutonium affair.^[8] Schmidbauer justified the deployment of Werner Mauss, who negotiated the release of hostages of ELN guerrillas in Colombia on behalf of the German government, as an "emergency humanitarian measure."^[9]

He was a member of the Parliamentary Oversight Panel (Parlamentarisches Kontrollgremium - PKGr) from December 2002^[10] and was an assessor on the executive committee of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group from January 2006.

On 16 May 2006, Schmidbauer announced that he was suspending his work in the Parliamentary Control Committee until the allegations against the BND in the so-called journalist affair had been clarified.^[11] As justification, Schmidbauer stated that some of the spying on journalists occurred during his time as intelligence coordinator. At the same time, Schmidbauer stated that he had "no knowledge of the events that are the subject of today's discussions."^[12]

On 28 April 2008, Schmidbauer announced that he would not run again in the upcoming Bundestag election.

References

1. "Aufstellung aller durch den Bundespräsidenten verliehenen Ehrenzeichen für Verdienste um die Republik Österreich ab 1952" (PDF). parlament.gv.at. Retrieved 18 December 2020.
2. "Bernd Schmidbauer, CDU/CSU". webarchiv.bundestag.de. Der Bundestag. Retrieved 18 December 2020.
3. "Ringvorlesung der Fakultät Bio- und Geowissenschaften". www.botanik.kit.edu (in German). Karlsruher Institut für Technologie. 10 October 2012. Retrieved 18 December 2020.
4. "Bernd Schmidbauer". CDU/CSU-Fraktion. Retrieved 18 December 2020.
5. "BND darf keine Journalisten als Quelle nutzen". Der Tagesspiegel Online (in German). 15 May 2006. Retrieved 18 December 2020.
6. "Das Durcheinander ist gefährlich". www.zeit.de. Retrieved 18 December 2020.
7. "Mission auf eigene Faust?: CDU-Politiker verhandelte mit Gaddafi-Regime - DER SPIEGEL - Politik". www.spiegel.de (in German). Der Spiegel. 10 April 2011. Retrieved 18 December 2020.
8. Seher, Dietmar (14 December 1995). "Plutonium-Deal kann den Geheimdienst-Koordinator vor Gericht bringen: Schmidbauer muß zittern". Berliner Zeitung (in German). Berliner Zeitung. Retrieved 18 December 2020.
9. Neudeck, Rupert (13 December 1996). "Verdienen die Aktionen des Privatdetektivs Mauss in Kolumbien das Wort humanitär?". www.zeit.de. Retrieved 18 December 2020.
10. Oswald, Bernd (19 May 2010). "Viel Stille um zu wenig Info". Süddeutsche.de (in German). Süddeutsche Zeitung. Retrieved 18 December 2020.
11. "BND-Affäre: Schmidbauer läßt Tätigkeit im Kontrollgremium ruhen". DIE WELT. Die Welt. 15 May 2006. Retrieved 18 December 2020.
12. "Bericht über BND-Spitzel wird veröffentlicht". www.tagesspiegel.de (in German). Der Tagesspiegel. 17 May 2006. Retrieved 18 December 2020.