Erhard Eppler

Erhard Eppler (9 December 1926 – 19 October 2019) was a German politician of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and founder of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ). He studied English, German and history in Frankfurt, Bern and Tübingen, achieved a PhD and worked as a teacher. He met Gustav Heinemann in the late 1940s, who became a role model. Eppler was a member of the Bundestag from 1961 to 1976. He was appointed Minister for Economic Cooperation first in 1968 during the grand coalition of Kurt Georg Kiesinger (CDU) and Willy Brandt (SPD), continuing under Chancellor Brandt in 1969 and Chancellor Helmut Schmidt (SPD) in 1974, when he stepped down.

An early thinker on environmental sustainability and peace movements, Eppler was involved in various controversies within his party. He was president of the Deutscher Evangelischer Kirchentag (German Protestant Church Assembly) from 1981 to 1983 and again from 1989 to 1991.

Born in Ulm on 9 December 1926, Eppler grew up in Schwäbisch Hall where his father was the headmaster of the local grammar school. His grandfather was pastor at the Ulmer Münster. During World War II, Eppler served from 1943 to 1945 in an anti-aircraft unit. He passed his Abitur in 1946, and studied English, German and history at the Frankfurt University, in Bern and in Tübingen. In 1951, he completed his PhD with a thesis on Elizabethan tragedy. He worked as a teacher at the Gymnasium in Schwenningen from 1953 until 1961.

Eppler became a member of the NSDAP in September 1943, at the age of 16. Later he spoke of this decision as "stupidity", but also said, "It wasn't against my will that I ended up on some list [of members of the NSDAP], but I accepted it. Things were like that in those times."

While he was studying in Bern at the end of the 1940s, Eppler got to know Gustav Heinemann, one of the founders of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). Heinemann became Minister of the Interior from 1949 to 1950, but then left the cabinet, and later the CDU, together with several other party members who disagreed with Chancellor Konrad Adenauer's policy of complete integration into the Western world. Eppler joined Heinemann's new party, the All-German People's Party (Gesamtdeutsche Volkspartei), in 1952, but like most members of the GVP, including Heinemann, he changed over to the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in 1956.

For most of the time between 1970 and 1991 Eppler belonged to the SPD's National Executive Committee. He chaired an SPD commission on tax reform, and from 1973 to 1991 served on a commission for formulating the party's basic values (Grundwertekommission), where he supported opposition to atomic energy.

From 1973 to 1981 Eppler was the leader of the regional SPD in Baden-Württemberg. He was the SPD's candidate for the office of minister-president in that state, but his party was defeated by the CDU in two state elections.

Eppler was a member of the Bundestag, the parliament of the Federal Republic of Germany, from 1961 to 1976.