Alfons Goppel

Infobox Politician
name = Alfons Goppel


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office = Minister President of Bavaria
term_start = 1962
term_end = 1978
predecessor = Hans Ehard
successor = Franz Josef Strauss
office2 = Minister of the Interior
term_start2 = 1958
term_end2 = 1962
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birth_date = Birth date|1905|10|1
birth_place = Reinhausen
nationality = German
death_date = Death date|1991|12|24
death_place = Johannesberg
party = CSU
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occupation = Lawyer
religion = Catholic


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Alfons Goppel (October 1 1905 in Reinhausen, near Regensburg - December 24 1991 in Johannesberg, near Aschaffenburg) was a German politician of the CSU party and Prime Minister of Bavaria (1962-1978).

Life

Alfons Goppel was born in 1905 as one of nine children of the baker Ludwig Goppel and his wife Barbara.

He married Gertrtud Wittenbrink in 1935 and together they had six sons.

Goppel studied law in Munich from 1925 to 1929 and, after graduating, moved back to Regensburg, where he became a lawyer. He joined the state prosecutors office in 1934 and was posted to Mainburg, Kaiserslautern and finally Aschaffenburg. He joined the conservative Bavarian People's Party in 1930 and was a member until the Nazis dissolved it in November 1933. He joined the SA (1933) and the NSDAP (1937) in the following years.

He took part in the campaigns in France and Russia in the German Wehrmacht during the Second World War and later became an instructor at the "Infanterieschule Döberitz", near Berlin, a trainings camp of the German army.

Returning from the war, he became an official at the city of Aschaffenburg, responsible for housing and refugees. He was elected to the Bavarian "Landtag" in October 1947 but barred from taking up his position due to his political past. He, unsuccessfully, campaigned for the "Landtag" in 1950 again, became second mayor of Aschaffenburg in 1952 and finally, in 1954, was elected to the "Landtag" and permitted to take up his position. He held his seat in the Bavarian parliament until 1978, when he gave it up to become a member of the European one.

He unsuccessfully ran for mayor of Würzburg in 1956 and became a under secretary in the Bavarian Ministry of Justice the year after. He was Bavarian Minister of the Interior (1958-1962) and prime minister of Bavaria from 11 December 1962 to 7 November 1978, serving as President of the Bundesrat in 1972/73. In 1974 he gained the highest election victory for the CSU in Bavarian history with 62.1% of the votes.

From 1979 to 1984 he was a member of the European Parliament, as such being part of the first freely elected group of MP's in 1979 [ [http://www.europarl.europa.eu/members/archive/alphaOrder/view.do?language=EN&id=842 Official website of the European Parliament - Alfons Goppel] ] .

One of his sons, Thomas Goppel, is now Minister of Science, Research and the Arts since 2003.

The "Alfons-Goppel-Stiftung" ("Alfons Goppel Foundation"), formed in 1980 and named after him, supports needy children in third-world countrys.

Honors

* Honorary doctorate of the University of Würzburg and the St. John's University Minnesota.

External links

* [http://www.agstiftung.de/agst.html "Alfons-Goppel-Stiftung", official website] (in German)

ources

* [http://www.bayern.de/Alfons-Goppel-.267/index.htm Official Bavarian government website - Alfons Goppel biography] (in German)

References