- Heinrich Albertz
Heinrich Albertz (
January 22 ,1915 -May 18 ,1993 ) was a Germanclergyman , theologian andpolitician . He was born in Breslau, today _pl. Wrocław, to a pastor as the younger half brother of Resistance fighterMartin Albertz . As a member of theConfessing Church he opposed the Nazis, was arrested several times and conscripted into theWehrmacht in 1941.In 1946 Albertz joined the
Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and was minister in thecabinet ofLower Saxony under Minister-PresidentHinrich Wilhelm Kopf from 1948 to 1955. In 1961 he became "Senator" (minister) of the interior inWest Berlin under MayorWilly Brandt , whom he succeeded as mayor in 1966. Nevertheless he was forced to resign one year later after an investigation into the police's role in the killing ofBenno Ohnesorg , a 28 year-old German literature student at a protest against theShah of Iran , an incident that became a turning point in the devolution of theGerman student movement .From 1970 to 1979 he worked as a pastor in Berlin. When on February 27, 1975 the
Movement 2 June militant group (named after the obit of Benno Ohnesorg) abducted the Christian Democrat candidate for Mayor of West BerlinPeter Lorenz , Albertz agreed to accompany the exchanged prisoners, among themVerena Becker andGabriele Kröcher-Tiedemann , on their flight to thePeople's Democratic Republic of Yemen . In the 1980s he joined the Germanpeace movement and several protests against the 1979NATO Double-Track Decision .
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