100th birthday of Gustav Heinemann - Germany / Federal Republic of Germany 1999 - 110 Pfennig

Born on July 23, 1899 in Schwelm, Gustav Walter Heinemann was already politically active during his studies of law, economics and history and was one of the co-founders of the Essen CDU in 1945. A year later he was elected Mayor of Essen and belonged to the state legislature in Dusseldorf from 1947-1950. In 1949, Konrad Adenauer called him Minister of the Interior in the first federal government. The conflicting political ideas between Adenauer and Heinemann finally led to Heinemann's ostentatious resignation in October 1950. At the beginning of November 1952, he resigned from the CDU because of the conflict with Adenauer, and joined the SPD in 1957 with regard to German and foreign policy conceptions. In a large speech, which was unusually well received by the public on January 23, 1958, he used a foreign policy debate in the Bundestag for a comprehensive analysis and critique of Adenauer's failed German policy. With this speech, Heinemann justified the reputation often confirmed in the course of his work as an outstanding, exemplary politician. In March 1969 Heinemann won as the first Social Democrat with the votes of his party and the FDP the election as Federal President. In his inaugural speech, Heinemann laid down the priorities of his administration, which met with approval and rejection in the political public alike: the reconciliation of the Germans with the former enemy states of the German Reich in the Second World War, rapprochement with the Eastern European states, the promotion of peace in Europe and the world as well as the strengthening and development of the democratic consciousness of the Germans and the tolerance and integration of marginalized communities in the Federal Republic. In 1974 he renounced re-election and returned to Essen, where he died on July 7, 1976.